Infuriatingly Slow

[BCNH]

The Arlo "live connection" and I use that term loosely is so infuriatingly slow to connect to live feed.  I could definitely be fully murdered by an intruder before I ever connected.  It often takes 1 or more full minutes to connect and there is always a lag time.  While the circle is spinning trying to get a live feed, I receive notifications of the activity so I know the camera is collecting the video, but live view just takes too long.  We have state of the art connectivity in our home with terrific signal and wifi reception, so the WIFI and range is not the issue.  For the price of the item and subscription I pay for, I really regret purchasing this product.  Does anyone else have connectivity issues?  

[jguerdat]

Signal strength/quality is the usual suspect. Are you connecting via WiFi or use of a hub or base? Have you checked for other wireless devices that could be interfering with the signal? What is the house construction? Have you brought a camera closer to the router or hub to see if that makes a difference?

[jbowyer]

Yes. I came here for the same reason. What a total joke. I specifically bought this system due to the live view feature. I have full wifi strength where the camera is. I tested our download and upload speeds. 55mbs download 25mb/s upload. Moved the camera next to wifi router to minimise this potential. Takes up to 5 minutes and multiple resets to connect. Then the “live stream” is more than 5 minutes behind. Getting notifications re: new recordings about 5 minutes after the activity, and the “live” feed still hasn’t caught up. What a joke. I want a full refund.

[JamesC]

jbowyer,

How is your camera connected? Directly to your home router or are you using a base station/SmartHub?

JamesC

[Alpal1200]

Just installed my very expensive single Pro 4 camera to test and roll out to replace and expand an existing (3 year old) Ethernet connected system of 7+ cameras. The wireless option is the attraction.

Definitely NOT getting any more of Pro 4s.

Typically takes about a minute to start transmitting picture in comparison to virtually instantaneous transmission from all of my other cameras.

Was going to buy a base station but I can see by the number of complaints on this forum that that’s not the solution.

I can also see that this forum isn’t too respected by Arlo as this seems to be a persistent problem with no solution other than to question wifi signal strength etc. i.e. not their problem. 

Can anyone suggest a modern alternative that works?

[Killhippie]

Not having that issue with mine, I've got other bugs like battery not showing its on charge etc, I think this is an issue between my router and Arlo or just a Arlo bug they cant be bothered to fix, my router is a Netgear RAX120. Latency is important, if you do a speedtest what's your latency like in general. I'm with a UK based company called IDNet, my latency is normally 6-7ms to London at the moment it is 14ms as the DLM switched interleaving on for some reason, but I can get a live feed going in about 10 seconds. Also how powerful your routers CPU is may help, but its latency that's important.

 Can you ping your cameras IP by traceroute to see how fast its connecting and then ping maybe the BBC (or whatever is in your country that's a good media source) to see what its like? Also since its on 2.4Ghz s if your router has auto let it use auto, 1-6-11 have always been the channels to use as they don't over ap but if all your neighbours are fighting to use the same 1-6-11 channels it wont help, nor will forcing 40Mhz leave it on 20Mhz. Channel 13 can work well in busy areas too in the UK too. Try dragging your camera off of smart can help in the speed of detection of movement as its not using smart processing in the cloud, maybe it helps connect faster too for live viewing. Its worth testing.

 Other routers, and local devices on 2.4Ghz can slow the network down either by interference or clients slowing your own network down by their spec, you ideally want all devices on 2.4Ghz to be 802.11n to keep the best speeds, I think if you have a 802.11b device that can slow the 2.4Ghz network down as it may operate at the speed of the slowest device. My router is a Wi-Fi 6 router, I am surprised Arlo have not got to Wi-Fi 5 or 6 yet but still use Wi-Fi 4  but I imagine its cheap, yet 2K cameras need 2Mbps, they all should be Wi-Fi 5 at least by now I would have thought. Arlo needs to modernise the spec of their expensive cameras especially if you are using 2k-4k over Wi-Fi it should be Wi-Fi 5 as that's been around for years now or better still Wi-Fi 6/ or 6E as that's now rolling out and has very low latency with massive amounts of bandwidth.

[dougols]

I just purchased 2 Arlo Pro 4 cameras and wired doorbell. It can take well over a minute to connect to live feed. Is it me or Arlo? I have high speed internet and am hesitant to spend more money on new router or range extensions when the problem may not be fixed and may just be a lousy product?

[Alpal1200]

Judging by Arlos response to this forum - I'd say Arlo is the problem!

[Alpal1200]

Just to add insult to disappointment, trying to connect to my Pro4 today I was met with a greeting, “Firmware Upgraded”. Whoopee, I thought. Maybe they’ve improved connection times. Nup! Can’t connect at all now! Good upgrade. 😤 

PS I tell a lie - just tried again - took 4 minutes to connect. Wow. What a great purchase.

[dougols]

I had my Internet Service Povider give me a new router. It is much faster than the previous one and they did not charge me. That was 2 days ago. I did get the firmware update. So far everything seems to be working fine. If I had to guess it wasn't a matter of Internet speed but one of range. Given that the camera uses 2.4 Ghz I am also considering moving my router from the basement upstairs.

[Alpal1200]

Does anyone know if you can connect direct to the cameras and NOT have to go to the Arlo servers? I’m over waiting minutes to connect (if it does)!

[Dbrzr1]

Yea we have had issues with some 13 yr old punks egging the back of our house. I will say the latency of these cameras are pretty bad. I have a 4 mesh eero pro wifi6 system which is more than capable of handling 3 cameras. I agree I could be robbed before I would be able to see what’s going on. Yeah pretty darn bad for the money.