Is there Arlo ultra 2 transmission delay?

[muralimailbox]

I bought an Arlo ultra 2 Camera set and now afraid to open reading the Video/Audio transmission delay also the App delay. Is it true about the delays? Does it happen with all Arlo Ultra2 cameras?

@JamesC or @Mark-V can you answer this does all the ultra 2 have a delay or does it depend on the connectivity issues? If all arlo ultra have delays what is the minimum delay one can expect?

[StephenB]

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@muralimailbox wrote:

I bought an Arlo ultra 2 Camera set and now afraid to open reading the Video/Audio transmission delay also the App delay. Is it true about the delays? Does it happen with all Arlo Ultra2 cameras?

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There is some delay - and the amount people experience varies considerably.

Personally, my delay is long enough that I don't find the 2-way communication feature to be usable.  But I find the delay acceptable for motion recordings/notifications and live streaming.

[muralimailbox]

If you don't mind could you let me know what is the delay like? I don't mind 2-3 secs delay anything more will be tough to accept as we can buy a wired camera for cheap.

[jguerdat]

I find that I have that 2-3 second delay but that's in my environment. The usual cause of slow response is due to the connection between the camera and hub or router, depending on how you've installed the devices. The key is a good connection which some have needed to solve by using a WiFi extender or by positioning of the hub and/or camera for the best connection. House construction can have a huge impact on this as well as distance and 2.4GHz wireless interference. With a good connection you shouldn't have any problems. If you do, you'll have to troubleshoot to isolate the cause.

[SinisterStairs]

My delay is typically 6-7 seconds.  I'm surprised that wi-fi connection is what determines the delay; I've always thought the issue was the connection between the home gateway and Arlo's servers.  My Arlo hub has line-of-sight (~20') to the camera through glass, and the hub is connected entirely by wire to the router & gateway, which has a fiber connection to the internet.

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@jguerdat wrote:

The key is a good connection which some have needed to solve by using a WiFi extender or by positioning of the hub and/or camera for the best connection.

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In that particular example, what signal would a wi-fi extender be extending, the Arlo hub's wi-fi, or a wi-fi connection between the hub and a router?

[StephenB]

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@SinisterStairs wrote:

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@jguerdat wrote:

The key is a good connection which some have needed to solve by using a WiFi extender or by positioning of the hub and/or camera for the best connection.

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In that particular example, what signal would a wi-fi extender be extending, the Arlo hub's wi-fi, or a wi-fi connection between the hub and a router?

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In that example, the wifi extender has ethernet out, and the base is connected to that ethernet.  So the wifi is extending the home network.

The base WiFi is closed, so it cannot be extended.

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@SinisterStairs wrote:

My delay is typically 6-7 seconds.  I'm surprised that wi-fi connection is what determines the delay; I've always thought the issue was the connection between the home gateway and Arlo's servers. 

Not sure if the wifi connection is the most common cause or not.  That much network delay is either due to packet loss/retransmission or congestion somewhere along the path to the server (or the path from the server to the phone). 

So it could be the wifi connection, insufficient bandwidth on the internet connection, etc.

One thing to clarify:  there are two delays in play here.

• onset delay - how long it takes from the time you request a live stream to when it starts.  That isn't just network delay,  it also includes the time for the cloud to connect to and wake up the camera.
• the lag (the round trip time for the audio/video to travel from the camera to the phone and back).   

Both matter for the real-time audio feature.

Lag is all about buffering - audio/video packets are being queued at one more more places on the path.  IMO, the excessive lag often reported here sounds like poor buffer control somewhere in the Arlo system.  You shouldn't be experiencing more lag with Arlo than you experience in a video zoom or facetime call.