Problems with Streaming Media - 4oD and ITV player in particular

[#1]

Quote

Planned Traffic Management Platform Maintenance - Wednesday 25th May, 2.00am-7.00am We be making some changes to refine the classification of certain traffic across the network. This includes some video streaming services such as ITV Player, 4oD and Sky Player and also download services for the iPad app store and iTunes.

Since this maintenance period, 4oD and ITV Player now appear to be completely unusable   They were just fine last night and have been at various other times over recent days as well but suddenly the data rate is now around 256kb/s on average (over an 8Mb/s connection) and therefore impossible to watch due to long breaks every few seconds.  Changing gateway did not help in the slightest. BBC iPlayer is however working as expected.  
Could possibly be just pure coincidence or some other problem and all that but ...  
Anyone else seeing significant problems with 4oD, ITV Player or any other streaming media since the recent Traffic Management changes ?
Documentary evidence of 4oD, ITV Player and BBC iPlayer data rates is shown below:

Anyone running a book and have decent odds on it being different after midnight cos I'd very much like to put my money on that being the case !

EDIT: Hmmmmm, could I please change that bet to 2300 hours rather than midnight ? I'm guessing that Traffic Management changes are perhaps an hour out (or someone has just tweaked something !) because at a little after 2300 hours all was suddenly exactly as expected despite being pretty obviously capped at a ridiculously low rate by somebody somewhere for the previous several hours.  
4oD data transfer just after 2300 hours:

Exactly the same thing happened with ITV Player as well of course so VERY suspicious to say the least.  

[#2]

OK, this is totally unacceptable and even worse than yesterday    Surely I can't be the only one seeing this  
I can't see how it can be a specific issue at my end when everything else is working just fine.  If it were a general CH4 and/or ITV issue then there would be no end of people complaining somewhere. If it were a general PN issue then their would/should be loads of people complaining on here. Even if it were a local exchange issue then I would expect to find someone else complaining somewhere. However, whatever is going on, there's certainly something gone very wrong somewhere and it appears to have coincided with PN Traffic Management changes and it appears to also come and go with PN Traffic Management time slots i.e. when peak time comes along certain streaming media grinds to a near complete halt..
Right now, 4oD is playing around 3 seconds of video followed by around 10 seconds buffering then another 3 seconds of video etc. How can this be considered in any way acceptable ? And I just can't believe that it's down to anyone or anything other than PN because every 4oD programme is the same. Ditto every ITV Player programme that that I've tried. However, BBC iPlayer is again working just fine and exactly as expected. It's quite ridiculous and I've have NEVER seen anything like this before ... even when I was on on 2M or less connection !!!!  This morning it was working just fine and I expect it will also suddenly be just fine again around either 2300 hours or midnight like it was yesterday. I even appear to still be using exactly the same connection/gateway as I was yesterday despite PN not being in any way interested in trying to resolve the persistent and unexplained problem of repeated dropped PPP they created by "upgrading" my 100% reliable 20CN connection to a totally unreliable and completely unstable 21CN  connection.
Here's the typical data transfer at around 1915 hours:

The initial data is the website loading and various adverts playing, the near-zero data transfer rate is the programme allegedly streaming so that I can watch it.  ITV Player is virtually identical, BBC iPlayer is just fine.
How can this NOT be down to PN and the recent changes ? It's only the things that have recently changed that are no longer working as they should be. Everything else is pretty much working as expected with no obvious issues. All speed tests (BT and others) indicate near maximum achievable data rate. Having said that, many customers are no doubt well aware that the BT side of things is very broken and they're lying through their teeth with speed test results and so on but I do at least have faith in other speed tests and they seem OK to me.  The BT tester and results are just getting more and more ridiculous and unbelievable on an almost daily basis. Right now my 8064kbps connection that apparently has a Maximum Data Transfer Rate of 7114Kbps is allegedly managing to shift data at 9205kbps   All I can say is I don't where the f*** it's sending data at that rate but it certainly isn't to me that's for bl**dy sure !!!

EDIT: Spoke a bit soon about not having a dropped PPP recently, one came along at exactly 2000 hours and just after I posted this.  Nothing else has changed though despite now being on a completely different gateway of course.

[#3]

That flat line you're showing when the stream should start looks very odd. Would you be able to wireshark the stream on 4oD and ITV player and submit them on a ticket so we can check they are prioritised correctly? I've just tried streaming 4oD from my PN connection and it worked fine.
http://community.plus.net/library/faults/using-wireshark-for-data-capture/

[#4]

Really sorry but in a word - no. Regrettably I don't currently have even my ancient version of it's predecessor (Ethereal) installed anywhere handy so I can't very easily do that at all. But surely it's pretty bl**dy obvious by now that these particular data streams are most likely NOT being prioritised correctly isn't it ? Can't PN simply check for themselves that they have an appropriate cap set for this type of data when accessed via my particular service offering ?  In fact, it has to be asked why can't PN actually check these things properly before making changes and before customers find out that there's most likely a problem that's been recently introduced somewhere ?
Are there any other customers around tonight who are still on Premier who can try 4oD and ITV Player themselves to see if they get the same problems as I am to at least show PN that it's probably not just me suffering with ridiculous data transfer rate limits on these services ?

[#5]

I haven't used 4oD before, so just tried it to see what happened.
So a speedtest currently shows 5.5Mbps.
4oD streaming the pre-program adverts at around 150MBps and is perfectly watchable.
as soon as the program starts the speed drops to 23KBps and is utterly hopeless !

[#6]

OK, it very much looks to me like it's the usual PN problem with Akamai data being throttled to such a ridiculous extent that any website using them is completely unusable by some/all PN customers.
A quicky look at my router stats suggests that the only connection apparently active just now when trying to watch a 4oD programme stuttering along at 3 secs on and 10 secs off was:
88.221.84.87:1935 [a88-221-84-87.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com]
If I were Akamai or someone no doubt paying them a small fortune to provide my customers with reliable and very high speed data transfer then I would have sued PN years ago due to the way they persistently make a complete mockery of using such expensive 3rd party serving systems to deliver data to my customers  !!!

[#7]

Quote from: purleigh

So a speedtest currently shows 5.5Mbps. 4oD streaming the pre-program adverts at around 150MBps and is perfectly watchable. as soon as the program starts the speed drops to 23KBps and is utterly hopeless !

Mucho thanks for doing that 
So, over to you Mr.PN  ... and I presume that I'm going to be seeing an appropriate credit on my next invoice to compensate me for several days of service not provided in a usable manner 

[#8]

I tested earlier today, and just now. I'd meant to do a couple more earlier in the evening, but forgot.
All 3 of iPlayer, ITVPlayer and 4OD work just fine. BBC in SD and HD, the other two in SD.
I'm on Extra, with an 8Mbps ADSL1 20CN connection.

[#9]

I second this problem. I regularly watch Time Team on 4oD and usually its pretty reliable. Tonight it is utterly unwatchable. Exactly as Mike describes it, 3 seconds of programme and then 10-15 seconds of waiting.
Do PlusNet actually understand their network - or is it a dark art where you fiddle something and see if its better and when its not you twiddle something else.
I sure you will say that you understand it totally - but why do we get disasters like this in that case?
Jim

[#10]

already reported this last night with a capture attached for 4OD, ticket 42963154

[#11]

If I try running BBC iPlayer at the same time as the 4oD streamer, the iPlayer works perfectly while the 4oD player stutters along as before

[#12]

Thanks for the replication of the issue all and thanks for the wireshark, I'll get this raised internally tomorrow.

[#13]

Something very weird has happened with 4oD. The new signature we added for 4oD was for the iPad so shouldn't have made any difference on a PC. Looking what the traffic is being detected as looks like it's hitting a P2P signature, I can't though replicate the problem and looking at the traffic flows only a small percentage of 4oD is being incorrectly tagged. I suspect that something has changed with one of the sources 4oD use, they use a mix of Flash, HTTP and HTTPS. It's only some of the Flash that's showing up incorrectly. I've put a temporary change in to try and fix it. Let us know if it makes any difference (I can see the traffic being correctly tagged now).

[#14]

I'm watching at the moment and seems to be back to normal

[#15]

By 2259 hours, the entire 4oD website had virtually ground to a complete halt. It was taking a dog's age to load anything at all never mind actually trying to play any of the available programmes. However, at 2301 hours everything was instantly just fine & dandy again and all content was playing correctly with data transfer as expected despite the data coming from exactly the same source as earlier. The same thing happened yesterday evening as well of course so it is nothing whatsoever to do with any 'fix' that might have been implemented around that time.
The 4oD data (RTMP on port 1935 via Akamai in particular) is clearly being prioritised incorrectly and then throttled to death at least at certain times of the day and on certain PN account types anyway.  It's probably just the old and long since obsolete A/C types being badly affected I would suspect which is why there aren't more customers complaining about it.  4oD data from other sources such as s0.2mdm.net and realmedia.channel4.com et al is apparently not being affected to the same extent.
Presumably, PN are on a robbing Peter to pay Paul stylee mission at the mo or something so expect some other service to get severely clobbered shortly (in the hope that no one will notice or shout about it) when this one is restored to it's former glory !
I'm not going to know if there is any significant improvement as a result of the 'fix' mentioned a few posts up until tomorrow evening.