Ping Timeout

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi,

Some of my clients are getting disconnected from the server quite often and I see the “PingTimeout” error in the log.

I am thinking of disabling this check by setting PingTimeout & ValidationFrequency to 0. Is there a downside to doing this?

Thanks,

Vivek

2

If you are using RTMPT increased pingtimeout is normal because Flash does not handle network problems well in this case. The best thing to do is minimize RTMPT connections, or add re-connection routines to the client.

Richard

3

I think we have discussed this with you at length. It is not a good idea to turn this off. It will lead to memory run up and eventually the sever will run out of memory. If the network connection is bad than dsi onnection is the right answer. You might also try a client based ping mechanism that will reconnect when disconnected.

Charlie

4

The pingtimeout mechanism is what is used to kill dead connections that are not responding. If you turn this off then dead connections will hang around forever. This is a memory leak. These connections will never be garbage collected. So memory will runnup and the server will run out of memory.

Charlie

5

@Alex.TBS,

Why do you want to turn off pingtimeouts when it is not a problem for you and it is advised not to do that?

You cannopt prevent disconnects in Wowza, it is normal for clients to disconnect either by user action or network problems.

Richard

6

Charlie -

I think you are confusing this with my question about disabling “disableLowBandwidthThrottling”. I can understand that can drive up server side memory usage.

Here I am asking about disabling “pingtimeout”. How can that drive up memory usage?

Reason I am interested in disabling “pingtimeout” is that I have a lot of unexplained ping timeouts in my logs from clients who claim to watch hours of uninterrupted video from other sources. So I wonder if I am hitting a bug somewhere and if I disable this check to avoid it.

I also have HTTP heartbeat messages coming from these clients, but I don’t see any delay/disconnects for those.

Vivek

7

Richard/Charlie - Could one of you explain why turning off pingtimeouts is a bad idea? Sounds like it would lead to memory runups on the server end, but I dont understand how. Isn’t “disableLowBandwidthThrottling” and “behindDrop*” supposed to prevent memory runups for bad connections?

8

Hi,

Our users has such problem. It is unexpected disconnect from server.

This problem appears when user connects over wireless connection or/and using mobile flash player 10.1.

But, i’m not sure this is a ping timeout because i did not see “ping timeout” in the logs, disconnect only…

I interested how to turn off pings too.