# HDS less stable than RTMP **URL:** \ **Category:** Wowza Streaming Engine\ **Created:** [May 11, 2013, 12:16am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hds-less-stable-than-rtmp/33590 "2013-05-11T00:16:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Karel\_Boek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.wowza.com/karel_boek/32/454_2.png) [@Karel\_Boek](https://community.wowza.com/u/Karel_Boek)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 12:16am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hds-less-stable-than-rtmp/33590/1 "2013-05-11T00:16:09Z")
A customer uses HDS in a Flash HTTP Player and viewers of the on-demand videos are complaining about unstable stream. I tested this myself and can reproduce the problem; the video would play for a random number of seconds, then stop and hang for a few seconds, then continue. This may happen at any moment in the video (even in the beginning) so I figured this isn’t a buffering or bandwidth problem. Whenever the problem occurs, a “seek” event is logged in the access log, even though I haven’t used seek or rewind. Occasionally I see that after the seek event, a “connect” and a “play” event are logged. I haven’t been able to find out when and why though. I started the same stream from an RTMP Player and haven’t experienced the same problem; the stream runs smoothly from beginning to end. Is there any explanation why HTTP streaming would be so unstable, while RTMP runs smooth? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_Dougherty](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.wowza.com/tim_dougherty/32/596_2.png) [@Tim\_Dougherty](https://community.wowza.com/u/Tim_Dougherty)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 3:30pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hds-less-stable-than-rtmp/33590/2 "2013-05-10T15:30:12Z")
The multiple-seek error is very common when bandwidth is constrained. Pausing and buffering are also typical symptoms of bandwidth constraints - regardless of the point in the video from whcih you’re streaming. Are you sure this isn’t a network problem? What happens when you try to stream sample.mp4 from the /content folder? -Tim ---
**Author:** ![Karel\_Boek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.wowza.com/karel_boek/32/454_2.png) [@Karel\_Boek](https://community.wowza.com/u/Karel_Boek)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hds-less-stable-than-rtmp/33590/3 "2013-05-11T00:35:04Z")
Thanks for your quick response. The sample.mp4 played fine in both players. FYI: the content is approx 1 mbit/sec, Wowza 3.1.2 build 1624 ---
**Author:** ![Karel\_Boek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.wowza.com/karel_boek/32/454_2.png) [@Karel\_Boek](https://community.wowza.com/u/Karel_Boek)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2013, 10:48am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hds-less-stable-than-rtmp/33590/4 "2013-05-11T10:48:10Z")
Implementing ABR is quite a job considering you’ve to re-encode all content 3-4 times. I doubt this is a bandwidth problem, since other services on this server have a rather good throughput (e.g. FTP download runs at ~6Mbps). Any other suggestions? ---
**Author:** ![Karel\_Boek](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.wowza.com/karel_boek/32/454_2.png) [@Karel\_Boek](https://community.wowza.com/u/Karel_Boek)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2013, 7:48am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hds-less-stable-than-rtmp/33590/5 "2013-05-12T07:48:58Z")
Back to the original question (see my first post). I’ve checked the specs of the server: - 2 x Quad Core Xeon @ 2.5GHz, generally ~10% usage - 8GB of RAM, of which ~6.5GB available - 100Mbit network card, ~50Mbps throughput According to my calculations, this machine should be able to serve 50+ simultaneous 1Mbps streams, but I’ve seen buffering/stopping of the stream with only 15-18 connections. Any suggestions? EDIT: See the results of the Bandwidth Checker below. How can this be, considered the specs given above? ![](http://www.raskenlund.com/downloads/bwcheck.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_Dougherty](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.wowza.com/tim_dougherty/32/596_2.png) [@Tim\_Dougherty](https://community.wowza.com/u/Tim_Dougherty)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2013, 3:51pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hds-less-stable-than-rtmp/33590/6 "2013-05-10T15:51:19Z")
You might want to try using adaptive bit rate delivery. This would enable the player to switch down to a lower bit rate when network conditions are less than optimal. Take a look at the tutorial on [How to set up video on demand streaming](https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-set-up-video-on-demand-streaming) which provides a section on how to setup ABR. You will need to re-encode your video using the same key frame interval and frame rate values for each encoded file. This may work very well for you. -Tim