Wowza RTMP streams SLOW after updates to server

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

MY BUILD

I am using a Linux CENTOS 6 server with Plesk 10.4.4 Apache and Wowza Media Server 3. The server is a quad core and has 12GB RAM.

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE

I was having a problem with some Wordpress websites that utilize lots of CPU when running custom CRON jobs, so I looked for ways to make the server faster.

I first installed eAccelerator, and that caused alot of my MYSQL tables to crash and some other problems arose. I uninstalled it and everything went back to normal.

Next, I found people were getting some good results with APC and Memcache, so I installed them after a yum update.

WHATS HAPPENING NOW

All RTMP streamed videos are buffering after playing only a few seconds, but the server load is practically nothing. This was not happening before all those changes.

load average: 0.01, 0.04, 0.06

Here’s an example (please see the video in the header section, they rotate each page load): http://activemd.net/index.php

WHAT I DID TO TRY TO FIX IT

I disabled APC and removed memcache.

I am still having the same problem of every video I try to stream. They all buffer after only a few seconds.

Another observation I’ll make is that APC and memcache seemed to make my PHP pages load slower. After disabling those modules, they now load faster.

THE QUESTIONS

What can I do to stop my videos from buffering?

Could one of the changes I made have affected the way my videos are streaming?

What are some troubleshooting steps I can take to isolate the problem of my videos always buffering?

Any help is much appreciated, Rick

2

I played the video a few times in the past hour or so, and I do not get any buffering. So it is probably a problem at the client where you are testing. bitrate vs bandwidth issue

Richard

3

I do not get any buffering from the players on those pages.

Richard

4

I noticed H.264 playback bug with Adobe Flash Player 11.3

When bufferTime less then 0.5, i have stuffering picture every two seconds on Windows7.

May be it is related issue.

Try to set client bufferTime=0.5 or 1

It should help.

What streaming model used? RTSP to Flash, RTP to Flash?

5

I’ll second that. I played your video a few times on my Linux box and on my Mac and it played fine with no buffering or stuttering. I’m sitting on a pretty decent connection (a speed test just reported 60 Mbps downstream and 33 Mbps upstream) so that could well be a part of the problem.

6

Hello All - Eddie here - I work with Rick - I am in tampa florida - using high speed broadband connection on three different computers in my network - both windows and apple - and I get stuttering playback issues on any wowza streaming video I play - this was not happening to me before - or to our clients - this is a new development -

right now this is happening to me - 11:40 am -

here is a customer site - http://larubinstein.com

and another - http://riverviewdocs.com

we need to fix this - SUPPORT US please -

Eddie, when I viewed the activemd.net site yesterday I was able to watch the video several times with no buffering. This morning I get buffering when I try to play the video from any of your sites. The question this is what changed.

Have you monitored load average and CPU usage figures on your Wowza server? Have you run and recorded the results of ping tests from your Wowza server to your public IP address?

I just reviewed your original post again. Would it be possible for you to move Wowza onto a server by itself? I suspect that your other applications are mucking with the server resources enough that it’s interfering with Wowza’s access to those resources. Do you have other Java-based applications running?

Would it be possible for you to move Wowza to it’s own server?

7

The fact that the performance is changing so much in a short period of time makes me think that it’s due to other things going on with his server, or with the quality of his Internet connection. Asking Wowza to run on a server where other resource-intensive applications are running is inviting trouble. I would want to see CPU usage stats, to see if the CPU is getting stuck in I/O wait.

8

Hello All - Eddie here - I work with Rick - I am in tampa florida - using high speed broadband connection on three different computers in my network - both windows and apple - and I get stuttering playback issues on any wowza streaming video I play - this was not happening to me before - or to our clients - this is a new development -

right now this is happening to me - 11:40 am -

here is a customer site - http://larubinstein.com

and another - http://riverviewdocs.com

we need to fix this - SUPPORT US please -