Streaming speed issues

[#1]

I have switched to Plusnet from O2 and two things have changed. Firstly upstream speed has dropped by around 30%, this appears to be, talking to a Plusnet engineer, a change in DSL encapsulation to VC/MUX. Although the downstream speed looks the same as it was streaming, as in watching movies, has slowed down on all devices, to the extent it will not work with some streaming sites. This is on our iMac and mobile phones. Is there a connection between the DSL encapsulation and streaming speed? Current 'raw' router downstream is 4194 kbps - upstream is 640 kbps. BT test site shows 3.56 Mbps and .54 Mbps respectively. I use a Billion router which has been very reliable, very little down time or signal drop.

[#2]

Hi mickburg,
Welcome to our community forums.
I've checked over your connection and can see no obvious issues.
Are you currently connecting over a wired or wireless connection?

[#3]

Hi Chris
Wireless. The router has not changed nor the equipment used for streaming, my son says even phone videos on YouTube are slower. The downstream speed looks fine the only difference I can see is the router setup, which changed encapsulation method for Plusnet connection.
I have noticed streaming video from sites like BBC and Rotten Tomatoes it takes them longer to work out the broadband speed, so the quality takes longer to improve from the fairly low res default, but they do get there. Not sure if that has an impact on streaming sites like 4OD and iPlayer.
The main computer is an iMac, recent OS and the machine is only about 3 years old.
Thanks

[#4]

I sometimes wonder if there is something not quite right about Plusnet and CDNs (Akamai mostly I expect), but I've never really been able to track down anything specific, and I don't have a particularly good connection anyway, so can't always say if the problem was due to a bunch of CRC errors on my line at that moment or something elsewhere.
I had noticed that there is usually a pause of a good 20 seconds or so with nothing happening after establishing a connection to cp3547.edgefcs.net (23.62.1.159) before the streaming data starts arriving. I just assumed that this could have been due using the rtmpdump program itself, and doesn't really matter because there is usually no problem with the streaming data running at full speed after it eventually starts. Occasionally the connection might fail after the 20 second pause, but only rarely.
So I tested using 8.8.4.4 as a DNS server (rather than Plusnet's DNS), cp3547.edgefcs.net is then 80.156.249.28, and there's no 20 second pause before rtmpdump starts receiving the data.
[tt]traceroute -q 1 -N 1 -I 23.62.1.159
traceroute to 23.62.1.159 (23.62.1.159), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1  192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1)  1.348 ms
2  lo0-central10.ptw-ag02.plus.net (195.166.128.196)  20.917 ms
3  link-a-central10.ptw-gw01.plus.net (212.159.2.148)  20.512 ms
4  56.core.plus.net (212.159.1.56)  20.655 ms
5  ae2.ptw-cr02.plus.net (195.166.129.5)  19.761 ms
6  *
7  a23-62-1-159.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com (23.62.1.159)  20.124 ms
traceroute -q 1 -N 1 -I 80.156.249.28
traceroute to 80.156.249.28 (80.156.249.28), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1  192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1)  1.486 ms
2  lo0-central10.ptw-ag02.plus.net (195.166.128.196)  20.310 ms
3  link-b-central10.ptw-gw02.plus.net (212.159.2.150)  20.589 ms
4  te2-3.ptw-gw02.plus.net (212.159.1.58)  19.502 ms
5  ae1.pcl-cr02.plus.net (195.166.129.3)  20.884 ms
6  ae2.pcl-cr01.plus.net (195.166.129.6)  20.570 ms
7  xe-11-1-0.edge3.London2.Level3.net (212.187.201.209)  20.659 ms
8  ae-0-11.edge4.London2.Level3.net (4.69.200.126)  25.067 ms
9  ae-3-3.ebr1.London1.Level3.net (4.69.141.189)  20.576 ms
10  ae-59-114.csw1.London1.Level3.net (4.69.153.126)  20.478 ms
11  ae-12-51.car2.London1.Level3.net (4.69.139.67)  20.929 ms
12  62.156.138.241 (62.156.138.241)  19.983 ms
13  f-ed4-i.F.DE.NET.DTAG.DE (62.154.14.142)  33.580 ms
14  80.156.249.28 (80.156.249.28)  33.782 ms[/tt]
Edit: I suppose the long pause I see could be explained by 23.62.1.159 not having a local copy of the videos I want, and might not be true for videos that are more viewed in the UK.

[#5]

@mickburg
I'm wondering if you might be able to try streaming over ethernet to see how that performs compared to the issues over wireless?
Adam

[#6]

According to BT SIN 472 you should be able to connect using PPPoA VC-mux or PPPoA LLC/SNAP or PPPoE LLC/SNAP, it also says using anything other than PPPoA VC-mux will be worse. I doubt the DSL encapsulation has anything to do with the streaming performance, I would also be surprised if it is responsible for the drop in upstream speed.