Arlo|Smart Home Security|Wireless HD Security Cameras

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LovelyNot
Apprentice
Apprentice

So, how long is one supposed to "wait" ? My local network and internet connectivity is all wonderfully fast and clean, but my annoying unconfigurable arlo cams take ages to load.

Looks to me like your site is way under its capacity, regarding load and amount of users at one time.

 

Why not have our cams load over the LAN? At least then the "Please wait..." will actually mean something.

29 REPLIES 29
jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

If after waiting several seconds doesn't load, try logging out and back in. Sometimes a force close helps, too.

LovelyNot
Apprentice
Apprentice

Waiting seconds? It doesn't take seconds, it just *never* loads any live stream at all. Has been this way for weeks now. When a livestream loads it's more the exception than the rule, and it's very exceptional I assure you. It has nothing to do with the app, or my browser, or my connectivity, it's also on the site. And all LEDs are green, all cams are connected.

It's just a stupid huge latency slow server-cluster issue on netgear's end. Hope they realize that some day: It's not the users, it's them. What did they expect anyway. to become the next YouTube for home-cameras with a fraction of the servers that YouTube uses?

jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

Sorry to say but your issue seems to be isolated to you. If it were systemwide, there'd be a lot more screaming and roaring. I'm not having any such issues and haven't seen other comments like this, other than on a very limited basis here and there.

Alpo
Star
Star

There has definitely been a performance degradation over the past few weeks.  I've tolerated an always sluggish mobile app, thinking that they did not design it well.  But now using the website is becoming a real pain.  From cameras that never load, to waiting way too many seconds for the camera or mode pages.  It seems to be that the servers have not had their capacity expanded enough to keep pace with the growing user base.  

 

By the time the pages load, I may as well get up and look to see what is happeni

JamesC
Community Manager
Community Manager

Alpo,

 

Is this issue intermittent or do you consistently notice this? Is it always the same camera that has the issue or are you seeing it across all cameras?

 

JamesC

emkeeper
Aspirant
Aspirant

I am experiencing same issue when trying to access the camera via the website. 

Andy_Arlo
Aspirant
Aspirant

I just bought this system, and an unable to do much with it - can never get past adding a mode - the same "Please wait" with the flying bird icon

 

Is this a general problem with this system - in other words, do I need to return this ? 

danb01
Guide
Guide
It seems like since the update a few weeks ago, it has been sluggish when connecting and showing statuses. Do not like!
jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

App or browser?  Have you tried the other? You can try to refresh the page (web) as well as log out and back in on either. Maybe a power cycle of the base would help.  Worst case, you can remove all devices in Settings, perform a factory reset using the reset button until the LEDs flash amber and start over.  Sometimes things get confused that a reset will fix.

LovelyNot
Apprentice
Apprentice

LOL, all those claiming to never experience the Please wait.. thing when trying to live view some arlo camera are either fanboys or netgear personnel, or hired by them to make such claims to avoid people returning and complaining about it.

 

Trust me, it's NOT the users, it's the tiny little cluster that netgear expects to be capable of handling such traffic demands. Such is pretty obvious when you have a solid business connection of 190Mbit/s down and 31Mbit/s up that shows the defects of the other end rather than locally. FYI, netgear; You are now the *only* website suffering from such Please wait loading time issues.

And it would be OK if the waiting would be rewarded, but it just ends with some sad little nothing, no dialog, no warning, no log, nothing to show to netgear that their website sucks ass like a turtle in just molten asfalt.

 

And secondly, it's not a very smart idea to make those damn base stations work on some random wireless channel. They should at least have picked a static channel, to be set by the user.

 

Still waiting by the way.

LovelyNot
Apprentice
Apprentice

OMG, a powercycle of the base station, sure, that could help, because then it picks a new wifi channel randomly, and at that point in time it might be less occupied. Seriously, man, that is no "solution" for the slow overloaded arlo.netgear.com streams.

hedged
Tutor
Tutor

I got the same exact issue. Was trying to modify the rules. First I tried to edit the default one that came out the box, got the Please Wait... problem. So decided to delete the whole rule and create a new one thinking that might just do it, but no. Same problem.


Contacted Netgear chat support who claimed it was happening because I dont have at least 1Mbit upload on my broadband line. LOL !! mmm kay. I'm only trying to change a setting! why would you need at least 1mbit to untick a few boxes and save the setting? come on Netgear, do me a favour.

 

I paid a lot of shekels for this product, and so far it's proving to be a pile... Ill probably return it and go with someone else even if I have to pay more.


Just to prove a point, I will connect to it tomorrow using a 1Gbit pipe straight into the UK internet backbone.

 

 

 

mightnotkeep
Aspirant
Aspirant

I am also having the same problems with the load screens. Just got this system today and I can not even change the settings on the camera. So I am stuck with 10 second record times and a load screen... Not worth the money. I will check to see if i can access and modify the camera, the way I should be able to tomorrow. I see no reason owning a security camera if i can not even access the options to edit what I need it to do. If I would of known of these problems before hand, I would not be on this site right now.

hedged
Tutor
Tutor

Indeed, I totally agree.   It's shame, the build quality is good, and it's a nice idea by netgear (wire free cameras) but if they wont take on board feedback and look into issues, there's no point buying them.  I was OK before the netgear support chat  tried to attribute the problem to a slow uplink. Customer Experience is everything these days, people will defect to other brands in a blink of an eye. What the netgear 1st line support person should have said is "thank you for the feedback, I will pass that on to our development team/3rd line support and we will come back to you", not send me a link to a netgear page showing the minimum system requirements.

 

I'm a deeply technical IT person as it is, and I was very cross by this apparent 'fob off'. Perhaps I should get my IDA Pro out and figure it out myself but I havent got the time or inclination to be honest.

jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

Have you tried both the app and at least one browser?  Have you tried logging out and back in?  Sometimes these things will help, other times not.  Worth a try.

hedged
Tutor
Tutor

Sure have.

 

Using IE on Windows 8 PC

Using Chrome and Safari on OS X.

Latest Flash installed for both.

 

Logout/Login has no effect. Rebooting the netgear base unit had no effect.

 

I can also confirm that synchronous 1Gbit/s connection directly to Internet had NO effect whatsoever ! (yes you read right, 1 Gigabit up and down link to Internet)

 

cheers

jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

I guess I'd try a factory reset using the reset button on the base until the LEDs flash amber and start over.  Remove all devices in settings, My Devices and start fresh.  Not sure that will help but it's something that has worked before.

 

Also, ports 80.443 and 123 to netgear.com should be open.

LovelyNot
Apprentice
Apprentice

All your recommendations are moot. Didn't work. Like I predicted, it's not something on MY end of the line.

 

Whenever I click the Live View button in the middle of the screen, it keeps telling me to Please Wait... and it does not change. Then it timeouts and just pretends I never even clicked it in the first place. Which is ridiculous. It should at least give some proper response, explaining what happens.

If I see problems like these I go to /var/log or my logstash instance somewhere, but for this crap I have nothing to go to. It's a server problem.

 

I have full batteries on all cams, all bars are black for the WiFi, it's all online, videos are being recorded and stored, though not always when they should by the way, usually too late with detecting, even at 100% detection sensitivity.

 

Please wait... until netgear expands its contracts with amazon and is willing to pay some more for bandwidth, processing power and/or RAM.

jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

It's not the servers or there would be tons of such issues. I agree that access to a log file would be handy but if there's no connection to the servers, where the logs are now generated, you likely wouldn't see anything useful. Only logs in the base could help and we have no access.

 

Have you created a trouble ticket? It may simply be a bad base.

LovelyNot
Apprentice
Apprentice

Months later, still nothing changed.

In the web-interface I press the triangle for Live view, nothing happens, all I see is "Please wait.." and then after some time it silently times out and pretends I've never even clicked it. I tried a different browser (Chrome), same problem.

 

I also experience this often when I try to take a snapshot in the settings for the devices. Nothing happens, no snapshot is being taken, and it times out pretending I'd never even clicked or asked for one.

 

Whatever it is, it's bad coding to just leave the user without even any explanation.

LovelyNot
Apprentice
Apprentice

By the way, this *also* happens on Android, on whatever 4G network I'm on. And I even experienced it on holiday, somewhere on the other side of the planet. Trust me; It's NOT a user problem.

This applies to the snapshot taking, and the Live view.

 

And also quite often just overall; loading times for Library or playback from the library is awefully long.

jguerdat
Guru Guru
Guru

Probably the quickest thing to do is reset the base,remove all devices in Settings and start freash. If that doesn't help, open a case with support. There have been many issues that have been fought for months that turned out to be bad hardware.

zazzafraz
Initiate
Initiate

LovelyNot - it's not just you.  I have the exact same problem in 2017.  You click the "LIVE" button and it says "Please wait..." and then times out. My cameras haven't refreshed their image in 9 days.  It makes them functionally USELESS!

JamesC
Community Manager
Community Manager

zazzafraz,

 

Consider rebooting your base station, using the on-off button, allow the base to come back online with a solid green power and internet LED and try again.

 

Do you still see the same behavior?

 

JamesC