Can't upload and watch On Demand at the same time?

[ForeverYoung_1]

Hello, i don't know what section to put this in...

A few days ago i noticed whenever i'm uploading something on the internet i am unable to watch Uverse Ondemand channels. While a file is uploading at it's full speed, whatever i'm watching at the moment on ondemand starts to freeze, but as soon as the file i'm uploading is done they start to play fine. It's only during an upload, not while downloading, anybody ever experience this?

I have Uverse 450 and UVerse Max Internet if that matters.

[markwmsn]

Yes, I have also observed this. Also, the brief "upload" portion of the official AT&T speed test sufficed to cause glitches in On Demand channels repeatably.

Experiments, including changing the speed on both my upload and my internet service suggests that the problem is related to saturation of the uplink as a fraction of the uplink limit rather than as a fraction of the total U-Verse bandwidth in my profile. For example, an upload using nearly all 1.5Mbps of a 1.5Mbps service (and 32/5 profile) has a worse effect on On Demand than an upload around 2Mbps on a 3Mbps service plan (on the same 32/5 profile and the same line).

It's almost as if the acknowledgement traffic for On Demand was being treated as outbound internet traffic instead of as TV traffic.

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Expert]

This is a known problem with all 2Wire units. They do not manage their routing queues well. When the upload queue has packets waiting (like when the upload bandwidth is saturated), the router tends to delay packets traversing the router in the download direction, even though there's no reason to.

The delayed packets don't affect Internet downloads, but time-sensitive data like streaming is interrupted by the delay. By the time the packets arrive at the STB, they're too late to be displayed.

[timbo33312]

Based on this thread, it seems this is a known problem with the 2Wire RG.  With this unknown to me, I've just had a U-verse technician at my home for over five hours, on the phone with engineers, etc., attempting to diagnose and correct this problem.  

Since the AT&T seems unable to understand this problem and you guys do, can someone please explain to me what setting I can change on the residential gateway to correct this upload/on-demand problem?

Thanks guys.

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Expert]

There is no setting on the RG that will compensate for this.

You need to configure whatever application you have running on your computers that is using all the upload bandwidth (online backup, Bittorrent, etc.) so that the maximum bandwidth it uses is limited to about 2/3rds of what your package includes.

The available internet packages of 3Mbps and 6 Mbps have a 1Mbps upload, so configure your application to limit the upload to 650Kbps.

The 12Mbps, 18Mbps packages have 1.5 Mbps upload bandwidth, so configure the application to 1 Mbps.

The 24 Mbps package has 3Mbps upload, so configure the application to use a maximum of 2 Mbps.

[timbo33312]

Somejow777...thanks for the reply and all of your posts. They're very helpful.

I remedied the problem by connecting a Belkin n600 router to the RG by bypassing the firewall with DMZ. Once router was configured, reassigned DNS server to opendns. Not sure if it helped but it didn't hurt. Then set speed caps on upload and download using "inteleatream". That's what Belkin calls it but I'm sure other manufacturers have similar functions branded differently.

Since I usually clock at 16 down and 1.5 up, I set the limits at just that. This way the client won't try to push the limits of the available bandwidth.

I know there are applications that are client based but they only help a single computer. My solution will prevent any user from exceeding available bandwidth restrictions.

It would be great if AT&T could acknowledge this issue publicly...supposedly their engineering experts in Atlanta are aware if this issue. I was told more or less to just deal with it. Better yet, AT&T should switch their RG/routers to better technology...but that'll never happen