Trouble streaming Women's Conference

Our stake building is in the process of getting a new satellite setup so we setup a laptop hooked to the projector and crab box for sound. We tested prior to the conference and streamed a 10 minute church video. No problems. At the beginning of the conference we had video but no sound but got the sound going about 4 minutes into the conference. That worked for about 10 or 15 minutes then we lost the stream. This happened throughout streaming the conference. We had to reboot the modem 4 times to get it going again. We have a 15 meg download speed from internet provider which runs close to that when you speed test it. There is no ethernet hookup within the chapel so we was using the wifi. All the sisters were asked to turn off their devices. Anyone have any thoughts on how to make this work better? We are going to get a long ethernet cord and run from the clerks office to the laptop for the priesthood session hoping that will work.

Thanks,
Whitt

You might call the ISP provider and ask them to check the levels on your modem. If the levels are marginal, you can have what looks to be a functional system, but still have dropped packets.

But first, go with a hardwired connection. Keep in mind there are length limits to Ethernet cable, so I'd make sure to run tests in advance.

Once you can get an Ethernet connection, I would turn off the WAPs using TM.
You could also try powerline networking as well. https://www.lds.org/help/support/powerl ... g?lang=eng.

Can you run a hardwire connection from the clerks office into the chapel? That is what we do at one of our buildings that the church denied us installing a cat 5 port in the Chapel for whatever silly dumb reason. You have to disconnect WiFi during these Web streamed events. We found out like you the hard way that simple asking the folks to turn off their WiFi won't be enough. Most don't know how (the sisters rely on their hubbies to do it) and even with WiFi off, if a clerks computer hardwired in is left on and decides then to do an update, there goes the bandwidth.

Cheers

Ryan

Had our internet provider check out the modem and connection and everything is running fine. Just wondering if the church servers can't keep up with the demand? One of the tech's for the internet provider said we don't have enough bandwidth and suggested that we go with a 50 meg download service instead of the 15 meg. Any thoughts? Also yesterday we ran the Women Conference talks for an hour with no freeze up's.

Thanks,
Whitt

farwest wrote:One of the tech's for the internet provider said we don't have enough bandwidth and suggested that we go with a 50 meg download service instead of the 15 meg. Any thoughts?

15 meg is more than enough - if you've turned off WiFi.

Okay 15 meg is enough but what about the church servers bogging down?

farwest wrote:Okay 15 meg is enough but what about the church servers bogging down?

I don't know how we'd know about that unless an employee tells us.

The church must have spent a bundle buying all new satellite receivers. There must be a reason why they did that rather than switch as many as possible to internet delivery. I think the internet has reliability issues.

farwest wrote:We had to reboot the modem 4 times to get it going again.

Re-reading your first post, this suggests an ISP issue. It's possible you also rebooted the firewall at the same time which might have helped, but if you had to reboot the modem, then there's a ISP problem. Bandwidth issues shouldn't force you to reboot.

But first, get a hard wired connection and turn off the WiFi. You might even want to go so far as unplugging everything else so no clerk machines try to do updates.

We streamed the General Women's Session of conference without any trouble at all on a 4 Mbps service, WiFi off.

Just to add another story for a "datapoint". This past weekend, our stake center's internet connection went down the dumpster. It's done that before. Calling the ISP provider suggested the levels were a bit off. I messed with the cabling (cable modem), redoing the connections in a outside box. That seemed to bring the levels up a bit and get things functioning, but there was still an issue. The cable guy came out and did some work on the outside. He indicated the levels were good, but suggested the signal to noise ratio wasn't. And that the modem needed to be replaced. I'll be getting that on Saturday.

But here's the takeaway - it's not just about bandwidth. Lost packets can be a far bigger issue. It also seems that modems do go bad. The one at church Is a little over 3 years old. I've had a DSL modem at home replaced when my DSL started acting up. So you may be suffering from a old modem. Marginal situations can appear at inopportune times, and are more likely to appear when you're streaming a 90-120 minute video than a short clip.

russellhltn wrote:Just to add another story for a "datapoint"...

Good info. Until I switched to fiber, I relied for decades on cable for Internet at my home. One time when my data speeds were "spotty" (mostly on, but sometimes not), a service guy came out, and after observing what was happening, and doing some line measurements at different points, he replaced one F-connector out near the street and fixed the problem. So yes, there are many points of failure besides the modem that can make service unreliable.

russellhltn wrote:It also seems that modems do go bad.

I've never seen them gradually "go bad", but if it needs rebooting every so often (or reboots itself) to stay at peak speeds, then I guess that would qualify. Also, if the modem is provided by the cable company and it's an older DOCSIS 1 or 2 version, then I would certainly ask to have it replaced with at least a DOCSIS 3.0.

So if you have a 4 Mbps service and we are pushing 15 Mbps service what are your thoughts on with this would not stream?

Thanks,
Whitt

So the question why won't a 15 Mbps service stream it? Provider showing everything good on his side.

Thanks

We've provided a number of reasons. The first being that you need to turn off the WiFi. Secondly, you could still be having ISP problems. Not all problems show up in bandwidth measurements. But try it without the WiFi and see how it goes.

Whether 4 meg or 15 meg, make sure to turn off the WiFi. We have a meetinghouse in our stake with 25 Mbps of service. When the members walk in to sacrament meeting on Sunday, a speedtest shows that only 8 or 9 Mbps remains out of the 25. That means that our congregation of around 180-200 uses up 16 or 17 Mbps of the bandwidth before they even start playing with their devices. Most of them don't even realize it is happening, but they are getting Gospel Library updates and updates to every other program they have on their devices if they have not been near a WiFi zone recently.

So turn off the meetinghouse WiFi when you want to stream a broadcast.

And just because the provider says everything is good on his side doesn't mean it is good on your side, so make sure you are actually getting the service they are promising.

Then make sure you have a laptop with enough memory and horsepower to stream the feed. My personal laptop has an uncanny knack of knowing when I am streaming something important and deciding then and there that the latest Windows update is more critical, or the automatic file backup starts to spin, or any number of other things that frustrate me. If your laptop is maxing out its memory or CPU capacity, or gets busy doing other things in the background, your broadcast will not stream nicely.

I think those are the biggest challenges.

Thanks for all the help we really appreciate it.

Whitt