Streaming and traffic management - differentiated services field

[#1]

On the whole my netflix streaming has been pretty solid, but I have had a couple of instances where it ground to a halt, or suddenly dropped to a very low quality level.
When this happened last night, I tried to run up 5OnDemand (never use it normally) to see if that suffered from the same download speed problem.
Surprisingly, this wouldn't stream reliably at all - totally jerky and totally unwatchable
I fully appreciate that there are many reasons that could cause this, but to eliminate the obvious I thought I would run up wireshark this morning for a
quick test just to see what prioritisation was being applied to the various sources.

Source	Differentiated Services Field
BBC Iplayer	0x60
Netflix	0x80
4OD	0x80
5OnDemand	0x20
ITV Player	0x20

Results were as anticipated for BBC, Netflix and 4OD, but surely the 5OD and ITV Player shouldn't be classified as Bronze ?
If the same prioritisation was in place last night (2145 ish) with a busy network , it rather explains why 5OD was totally unusable ...

[#2]

Hi Roswellgrey.  Do you still have the wireshark captures so we can have a look?  That sounds very wrong.

[#3]

HI Roswellgrey,
I've just dropped you a PM.
Thanks,
Jojo

[#4]

Hi Kelly & JoJo
I don't have the one's done a couple of hours ago, but i just did a 5OD cap and its consistant with the previous observation - i.e. a diff services field of 0x20.
Trouble is, even a short capture is a 21M file even when zipped, although I can try to do a shorter capture ...
JoJo - thanks for the pm - I don't think the mail transport will like a 20MB file ? ( I am pretty sure mine wont like it anyway ...)
I will come up with an alternative solution , unless you have a ftp server I can temp upload the caps to ?
Important note : you cannot look at the diff services field on the initial adverts - they are 0x80 as expected
Its only when the main program starts does the DSF drop to 0x20 ( different content source  i.e. different source ip address )
As such, the first minute(ish) of capture won't show the problem due to the adverts coming from a different source ...
Hence, a large capture file is really required  

[#5]

Yeah, we'll need the capture from the start, right through to when the main program starts to play.  Do you have pn webspace?  You could upload it there?

[#6]

Quote from: Kelly

Yeah, we'll need the capture from the start, right through to when the main program starts to play.   Do you have pn webspace?  You could upload it there?

You read my mind - I just thought of that. Will see if its still active and have enough space ...  I will let you know
Just done short caps for all the providers I listed - only change is now 4OD has dropped to 0x20 from an earlier 0x80 - would guess its a source IP change from before ...

[#7]

http://www.channel5.com/shows/ncis/episodes/the-spider-and-the-fly will send you a link via pm to the capture same deal showing as bronze, capture is the last 10 seconds of an advert and the start of the program.

[#8]

Thanks guys!
We'll do our best to get to the bottom of this.

[#9]

uploads in progress  - as per PMs sent to jojo and kelly,  they should be complete in around 10 20 mins time.  
Hope they help
update : done ( eventually ... )

[#10]

Gus's pcaps seem to correlate with what you've said.  We'll double check with yours once they are up and confirm that they support the problem.

[#11]

Just an update after your fix : a few (not extensive) random stream tests shows all Differentiated Services Fields are now coming down to me as 0x80

[#12]

Excellent, Thank you very much for all your help with this