Port forwarding very slow & not stable. Takes forever to download and not available after download.

[Passwordistaco2]

Hi all,

New to the community. I have the Ultra VMB5000.

I had the cloud service for 12 months, but prefer not to sign up for a subscription.

I have attempted local storage access, and decided to go with the port forwarding route as the easiest way to access. I understand all the risks associated etc.

I have an issue though... I’m quite disappointed with how the Arlo base station is performing:

1) speed
- the app takes forever(!) to download a video through port forwarding. I’m talking up to 5 minutes for a 20 second video. Is this normal due to 4K res? Hardly feels useful when you need to be able to see the recording after the alarm goes off..

2) video not available after download
- now when I’ve downloaded the video, a lot of the time I’m not even able to play it? The thumbnail image is blank, and it won’t let me play the video. In other words, useless.

What can I do about these issues? In particular the second one?

And for what it’s worth
- iPhone XS with 200GB free storage
- Micro SD card with 60Gb free
- 4G internet connection when away at 30mbps DL and 10mbps UL
- Router configuration is set through ASUS router with a static DHCP as recommended.

[jguerdat]

Your upload speed and the size of the videos are the likely issue, not to mention any network slowness between your router and your phone. I just checked and I'd expect the video size of a 20 second recording to be in the 5-10MB range. Given a ~1MBps upload speed (from a 10Mbps connection) should only take a few seconds but the speed of response from your hub/USB device, router, Internet, etc. all gets in there. Even locally I find varying speeds when looking at local recordings. 5 minutes is certainly excessive but you'd need to do some troubleshooting to try to find out why.

As for viewing the video, start by using the free VLC app. iOS phones seem to have had various issues with Arlo recordings using default apps but VLC works well.

[Passwordistaco2]

Thank you for getting back to me, really appreciate it.

Do you have any tips on troubleshooting speed? The router performs exceptionally well, and is of course hardwired into the Arlo hub.

As for my phone, on a 4G network it speed tests at 30mbps/10mbps pretty consistent.. can get higher when I’m closer to a 4G tower of course.

Just not sure what I can troubleshoot in terms of speed, given it feels it’s to do with the port forward connection. My phone can download apps and high res images (over 10mb) very quickly over 4G.

[jguerdat]

It may well be the port forwarding but I would think that could be a router issue. If you're at home and you look at local recordings, how does that work?

[Passwordistaco2]

Almost instantly, that’s kinda why I didn’t think it was the router. It’s very simple once on the home network.

For what it’s worth my modem router is an ASUS DSL-AC68U.

[jguerdat]

I wonder if it's the DSL part of things. I have no experience with that.