Upload size...200kbs?

[whitenack]

Hi all,

Just got an Arlo Pro for Christmas and I am currently working to get everything set up and working the best way possible. The video is a little grainy, not bad, but not as good as I had hoped, plus I occasionally have ghosting, etc.. I see that the recommended upload speeds for Arlo Pro is 1Mbps and my current internet plan is only that fast, so I thought it might be my upload speed or clogged bandwith from all of my other devices.  I went into my router to see about setting up QoS rules to prioritize the Arlo recordings, but I found that my Arlo recordings were only using around 200kbps max while they were being uploaded.  Does this sound right?  If not, what am I missing?  I have the video settings set on the highest possible.  

Just FYI, I have the base station in the room closest to the camera (it shows full connection on the camera).  The only thing I haven't ruled out is other wifi interference.

[TomMac]

That may be possible, but remember that the data stream can peak and the Base has the ablility to stream 5 cams at a time ( and other control commmands )

[whitenack]

Thanks for the reply.  I had seen that chart and I guess that is what has me puzzled.  It seems like my upload speeds are more in line with the "best battery life" bandwidth than the "Best video".

For example, see the screenshot below of my router's traffic monitor, showing three different test recordings.  The upload file never gets above ~200kbps.  

[whitenack]

Does anyone else have any thoughts?  Is this normal to have your upload speed no more than 200kbps?  I have played with my QoS settings on my router and my alro upload is still ~200kbps.  My quailty settings are on max, so according to the chart I should be getting much higher upload speeds.

[whitenack]

Ok, just an update...

Maybe I don't understand upload speeds and what my router is showing me on this traffic monitor.  I just ran a speed test and here are my results...

But here is what my traffic monitor looked like during that test.  You'll see that my upload speeds (blue) never show getting above 286kbps even though my test show my speed to be 1.76Mbps.

So evidently there is something going on here that I don't understand.  Maybe I am getting the best quality upload speeds and my router isn't showing it accurately.  And the poor video quality is just my overestimating what the quality should be.

[jguerdat]

Don't forget that anything between your router and the server can slow the transfer rates down. You can get an idea where potential holdups are by using traceroute (tracert.exe in Windows). Open a command window (cmd.exe in Windows) and enter

tracert arlo.netgear.com

Single and double digit response times are good but you're apt to see triple digit times as you get closer to the server. Ignore the no response ones, just concentrate on those with numbers. My servers are in Ireland so I'm competing with a lot of traffic which could easily slow down your observed rates.

[whitenack]

Thanks for the reply.  I didn't know you could trace a server like that.  Pretty neat.  Here are my results.  I deleted the IP addresses.  I didn't know if there was anything there that I shouldn't post to the public.

Tracing route to ArloProdLB-1815857678.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com [52.17.138.188]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms 
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 
3 21 ms 59 ms 55 ms 
4 57 ms 28 ms 44 ms 
5 28 ms 29 ms 34 ms rrcs-74-87-151-145.west.biz.rr.com 
6 25 ms 59 ms 68 ms ae15.hdbgky0402h.midwest.rr.com 
7 71 ms 88 ms 75 ms be30.rcmdkyat02r.midwest.rr.com 
8 32 ms 43 ms 28 ms be26.clmkohpe01r.midwest.rr.com 
9 52 ms 69 ms 47 ms bu-ether15.chctilwc00w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com 
10 54 ms 43 ms 99 ms bu-ether11.chcgildt87w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com 
11 81 ms 50 ms 57 ms unk-426d05e1.adelphiacom.net
12 64 ms 113 ms 74 ms chi-b21-link.telia.net
13 57 ms 63 ms 134 ms nyk-bb3-link.telia.net
14 134 ms 217 ms 214 ms ldn-bb3-link.telia.net
15 123 ms 124 ms 178 ms slou-b1-link.telia.net
16 151 ms 144 ms 122 ms a100-ic-316401-slou-b1.c.telia.net
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

I'm not sure what any of this means.  

[jguerdat]

It appears you're in the US mid-west someplace, connecting to Chicago and then NYC (I infer this by trying to interpret the DNS names). There's some occasional time being added getting to Chicago and NYC since you have a triple digit response time  ofr one test of each of those hops. And then you get to London and beyond and things really start slowing down. Since there's bidirectional traffic (data being sent to the servers gets at least an occasional response from the servers which can cause the overall transfer to pause while waiting for the response) we can deduce that what you see on your end is being caused by slowness, particularly due to the trans-Atlantic trip.

Servers in the US would help reduce this but it appears that EU servers are being used due to the difference in US vs. EU legal issues (EU being stricter on privacy). A bit of a guess here but seems probable. Since the systems can be set up in the US but used in other countries, I'm guessing this scheme reduces the need to determine what connection needs additional privacy protection.