How do I improve streaming performance with my setup?

Question

I'm experiencing freezing and glitches while watching streams online, especially HDs. Ex. http://www.en.aljazeerasport.tv/ which is flawless on Windows and glitchy / freezing on Ubuntu

Current setup ~

• Ubuntu 11.10 64
• Hardware http://pastebin.com/NFgRwYTK

Answer 1

Sounds like dropped packets and high ping times. If you say Windows works fine then the problem should be from your Ubuntu system to the router.

First find out the IP address of your default gateway. One way to do it is by running this in a terminal:

ip route list |grep default

you'll get something like this:

default via 192.168.108.1 dev wlan0  proto static

next, on the terminal, try pinging the gateway, to get an idea of packet loss and roundtrip times:

ping -i .200 -c 100  <gateway ip address>

You'll get a running count of pings, and a report at the end:

PING x.x.x.x (X) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=8.55 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=4.82 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=3.67 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=2.87 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_req=5 ttl=64 time=3.16 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_req=6 ttl=64 time=17.5 ms
.
..
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_req=100 ttl=64 time=0.971 ms

--- 10.153.108.1 ping statistics ---
100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 19856ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.888/2.408/16.572/2.469 ms

You'd want to see no packet loss and an avg rtt time of maybe 100 ms for things to run smoothly. If you lose packets or you notice that the running count shows some wild variations in rtt times, that may be what's causing the glitchiness. A mismatched or wrong driver may be the cause.

Are you connected through your wired or wireless interface? Also, your HW info suggests it's a laptop. If that's the case, could you check if you get the same results when it's plugged into AC power? some wireless adapters go into "low power" mode which may adversely affect performance.