What is being uploaded?

[Jim93]

When I look at the download and upload bandwidth being used by the NOW TV Player in NetLimiter 4 Pro, I notice a very strange thing...

The download speed varies between about 8 to 15 Mbits per second which is about what I would expect. But, there is also significant uploading going on. The Now TV Player appears to be uploading data at about half the rate of the download stream!

Current snapshot values are 10.6 Mbps down and 5.33 Mbps up.

Does anyone know what is happening here?

Thanks, Jim

[redchiz1]

Live streaming involves uploading data back to the internet server, so it is perfectly normal.  

[Jim93]

It's odd though that iPlayer, Netflix and Amazon Prime have uploads running at about 0.02 Mbps. Why would NOW TV require 250 x as much upload data as other streaming services?

Is it grossly inefficient engineering?

Is it something more sinister?

It makes you wonder...

[redchiz1]

Wonder away mate. Or look it up on Google. Other search engines are available. 

[Jim93]

I take it you don't know then?

[RoyB]

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@Jim93 wrote:
(re @redchiz1 )

I take it you don't know then?

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😛

I’m not sure of your methodology here, though.

You are giving data rates; these are data rates specific to the apps being measured, and actually being used, not just the rates available to you for uploads and downloads?

But if borne out, you could have at last explained why Now underperforms compared to its competitors, if it is trying to make heavy use of the upload path, which is usually much more limited than the download path.

But despite @redchiz1’ airy enjoinment that it would be easy to look this all up on Google, I haven’t been able to construct a search that gets any of what would be the right answers, relating to back-channel use. Perhaps he might like to try….

 However, I did download SnapStats on my iPad, which seems to give the measurements we need, and carry out a very brief test streaming videos on Now and Netflix:-

Now: down 60.8 Mb, up 0.75 Mb

Netflix: down 101 Mb, up 1.8 Mb 

Normalising the Now values to 100 Mb down would suggest 1.25 Mb up, i.e. slightly better than Netflix, and nothing like what you are seeing.

But both these figures are for selecting and playing the first few 10s of Mbytes of the videos in question, where you would expect an original flurry of uploading; so the ratios might well have improved as the videos played on.

[Jim93]

NetLimiter shows the data rates for each application separately, so I think the numbers I gave are correct for NOW TV Player running on my Windows 10 PC.

I haven't measured the data rates on my iPad. I've never had a problem with the NOW TV iPad app though.

Perhaps the two apps are very different in this respect.

The attached screen shot shows a typical reading when the app has been running for a few minutes.

[RoyB]

@Jim93 

I still suspect you are reading Rates.

Can you please toggle the Rates button on that Activity View so that it says Total, and post the image again?

[Jim93]

Here you go...

 

[RoyB]

@Jim93 

Right then, that indeed seems pretty conclusive; looks like something wildly wrong with the PC app, or at the very least, something horrendously inefficient.

Just for completeness, though, can you try the same thing on your iPad with that SnapStats app I mentioned?

That will tell us if it is your broadband setup generally, or specific to the PC Now app.

And I will try Netlimiter on my laptop tomorrow, see what results I get.