Purpose

Greetings, This posting is my private effort to collect some resources and basic troubleshooting advice for the commonly experienced problem of Lost frames caused by Network-Related Issues, and might be an article some day, but there are so many words I have not yet been able to write to adequately explain for the non-technically-oriented audience.

Some key points to be elaborated upon are:

• Network performance metrics constantly fluctuate due to multiple variables.
  
• When residential ISPs sell you "10 megabits upload" - That usually doesn't guarantee you even 3Mbps 100% of the time; let alone the 10Mbps.
• Network Quality measurements such as ping are different when you are using the network heavily versus not using it at all -- it is the measurements under load that matter.

Items less centered around troubleshooting can be found on r/Twitch Wiki pages about broadcasting.

Some past Articles on this Subject

• r/Twitch: What do you do when bandwidth issues occur?
• PSA: Don't use Speedtest to test your internet
• websavers KB article
• Puma6 Modem issues

Some steps and resources for Finding or Addressing Network-Based Drop Issues

Recommendations for Twitch Users experiencing Network-Based Packet Drop issues:

• If possible use OBS version 24 or newer and not SLOBS: Turn on the Dynamic Bitrate Feature as a preventive/protection measure if the network is performing correctly a majority of the time, and there are only occasionally or at certain times frame drop issues -- this advanced feature causes OBS to detect and respond to loss of network throughput on its own by automatically starting to lower bitrates in response to an Upload performance issue, instead of dropping frames.

• Apply testing methods in attempt to isolate or rule out problems due to (1) Another device sharing the Network - Such as another PC, (2) a bad Ethernet Cable, Router, (3) Modem, or (4) Unstable in performance or insufficient Internet Service Provider bandwidth, Packet Loss, or Connection Instability.

• Running actual Test streams, using testmy, or Twitchtest seem to be the best bet, as put well here by u/LtRoyalShrimp:

  Speedtest is in no way representative of your connection to the Twitch ingest or CDN servers.

• If rate adjusts frequently: then reduce the max bitrate figure and/or Output resolution (Not base canvas) according to Twitch Recommendations or Enable Dynamic Bitrate in OBS24 if Network Congestion may be an issue.

• For testing purposes: make sure internet connection for streaming PC is wired for reliability. While modern WiFi protocols such as 802.11ax provide more than enough bandwidth -- WiFi performance can often be compromised unexpectedly by outside RF interference, long distance, too many devices; often there may be too many variables to isolate.

• Check bandwidth speed measurement frequently -- to establish frequent measurements of packet loss, especially while using nearly the amount of bandwidth/speed expected to be available.

• If Speedtest.net does not show issues: Check Ping for Packet loss and Good latency to servers (≤100ms) -- and acceptable packet loss 0.1% or less: while utilizing 80% of available bandwidth. Note that these figures deteoriate when a percentage of the maximum media speed is utilized.

• If speedtest.net never shows issues in spite of repeated testing: Run a continuous ping to check for complete connection drops -- How to run a continuous ping or use a better tool such as Ping Plotter to gather a continuous reading of loss to multiple internet destinations.

• If issue still not exposed: How to run a bandwidth test stream without appearing to other users to go live on Twitch:

  • On OBS or another tool, add ?bandwidthtest to the end of your stream key.
  • You can then run a several hours test stream as long as needed and use the Twitch Inspector as if you were live at the time. The channel on Twitch does not show as live, so long as the designated "bandwidth test" stream key is used to contact Twitch servers.

• If measurement tools still have not shown an indicator of Congestion or Connection Loss, and the Internet Service Provider support line is unhelpful, then consider more advanced tools and testing Until a tool shows the issue in the form of Packet Loss at a time when the Upload usage (in megabits per second being transmitted) is below the expected upload speed capacity:

Twitch-Provided Diagnostic Tools

• Twitch Inspector - Tool provided by Twitch; Shows some insights into stream throughput and stream health over time - see [Guide to Broadcast Health and using Twitch Inspector(https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/guide-to-broadcast-health-and-using-twitch-inspector?language=en_US)

3rd Party Software to Help test your internet connection

Regardless of tool chosen; some Firewall port forwards may need to be created on any router for UDP-based test measurements, and some UDP tests may be required to show an accurate picture of bandwidth.

• TwitchTest - Free Tool for Windows that helps you measure your RTT, connection quality, and upload bandwidth to EACH Twitch server
• Pingtest - Discontinued &rarrow; Speedtest Desktop
• Iperf3 - The ultimate speed test tool for TCP, UDP and SCTP, And see the Iperf3 Public Servers list for some servers you can use to test with.
  • This is one of the free tools most commonly used by Administrators and Network Engineers for connection quality testing.
  • Unfortunately, it is an advanced tool that requires some Internet Protocols knowledge.
  • There has been a project to develop an Iperf3 GUI for Windows - and they have provided some Videos showing how to run some basic tests

Commercial Services

• DSLReports Tools - See Smokeping and Line Monitoring

Commercial Software

These graphical tools are a great idea to probe over time and see visually if Network Packet Loss is indeed starting to become a problem.

• Multiping
• Ping Plotter

Other Web-based Testing Sites

Alternatives to speedtest.net

• M-Lab Tests
  • M-Lab NDT Test
• Bandwidth: Openspeedtest
• Bandwidth: speedof.me
• Bandwidth: testmy.net
• Short Ping Test: Meter.net
• Ping Test: ping-test.net
• Google Fiber Speedtest
• G https://projectstream.google.com/speedtest