Slow Plex speeds from SYS

I have a Dedi from SYS and a shared seedbox on whatbox.ca. On my whatbox plex server I can stream at any speed that my admittedly slow internet connection will allow (~5 mbps). But often my SYS plex server will need to severely reduce the quality in order to play without issue. My internet connection, while slow, is not the problem. It’s very consistent, and never dips doing any other downloading. This seems to be an issue with plex streaming only. (Plex Media server is the same version on both whatbox and SYS servers).

For example, from Whatbox I can Stream 4-5 mpbs, download from FTP at 5 mbps, and download a video file from the plex/tv web app at my connection’s max speed.

For my SYS plex server, I get max speeds from FTP (5 mbps), but streaming from plex I can only play around ~1.5 mbps 480p, and downloading a video file from plex web maxes out at around 2.2 mbps.

I’ve had similar reports from a few other plex users on my server. For example, my brother’s internet is 250mbps, and he can easily get a single connection on FTP to go 50+ mbps, but anything through plex maxes around 6 mbps.

This is not a hardware bottleneck issue, as my processor (Xeon e3 1245v2) is more than capable, and the average disc I/O is 258MB/sec. I presume the problem is bad routing. I have done an MTR from the server to my home IP and there are some irregularites. Pretty severe packet loss at two points, and some jitter, though I’m not certain how to interpret any of the data.

Here’s the MTR, iperf3, and system benchmark info : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3ih5iv6up86uje7/AADmxwKKT2EbVs0_VcAPh7sYa?dl=0

Also, I found another person with a similar problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/5vgh8s/speed_through_plex_much_slower_than_http_server/

If anyone has any idea what I can do to fix this, I’d appreciate the help.

yes there are several reports of slower than usual speeds… i myself was experiencing them and have switched between 3 servers… just today I read that this can have something to do w/ latest version of plex, but that is not yet confirmed. worth researching tho…

It looks like it is definitely a plex issue. Hopefully they kick out an update soon. I reverted back to 1.3.4.3285 and it seems everything is back to normal.

In case anyone is interested, to revert to the last version:

wget https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server/1.3.4.3285-b46e0ea/plexmediaserver_1.3.4.3285-b46e0ea_amd64.deb

dpkg -r plexmediaserver

dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.3.4.3285-b46e0ea_amd64.deb

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I was able to cure my problems by downgrading and using OpenPHT as the client on my Windows PC. Gone from not being able to reliably stream 720p to streaming 1080p without delay or issues.

Bringing this baby back to life! I’ve been having the same issues. Didn’t realize it was this big of an issue until I got a whatbox.ca slot and realized my SYS seedbox is hot garbage. Plex and SFTP speeds are 3 to 4 times what my dedi SYS is giving me. Whatbox easily streams 10MB 1080p from plex while SFTP is downloading at 10MB. SYS can barely hold a 4MB 720p plex streram while SFTP is going at less than 1MB.

Is this just due to SYS/OVH having awful peering or is there something else I’m missing?

What’s your location?
I didn’t have problems with SYS (i’m based in south of France and SYS Datacenter is in North of France). I have 12MBPS connexion, and streams between 7-11MBPS (depends of the time during the day)…

That may be part of my problem. Was located in Central US with a Canada server, now located in South Korea with the same Canadian server. Speeds have decreased a few meg since my move, 6MB in USA vs 4MB in Korea.

I don’t know if it has peering problems between South Korea and Canada, but yes it can be a part.
My brother (based in center of France) with 1Gbps connexion can stream easily a 4K film at the higher bitrate.
So I don’t think it’s directly a SYS problem but a peering problem between Canada > the world.