Help troubleshoot slow WAN connection to BI

Frankenscript

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Hi folks,

BI is up and running beautifully; has been for me since last May. Best money I ever spent.

My new issue is that when I'm out and about away from my LAN, using my cellular connection on my phone or any other device, getting the camera images to fill in or play is relatively slow, compared to how it was up until a month or so ago. The android app connects nearly instantly (~1-2 seconds at most), then leaves me at a screen that looks like this for a while; it may be 10-15 seconds before all of the camera views fill in:
Screenshot_20190202-113112.jpg

Even after the views populate, if I click on any of them to start a video it probably takes about 10 seconds to start playing.

This has essentially nothing to do with BI; I'm sure it's some sort of configuration problem probably with my router.

Again, when I'm on my LAN, the images populate instantly, and videos play right away. It's like, click icon and BAM! Populated images. So, the computer and software are plenty fast. It's NOT BI being laggy.

My home connection to the internet is strong, a solid 90-100 Mb/s download with 9-10 Mb/s upload.

So, what has changed since last month? Two things:

1. I upgraded my phone from a OnePlus 3T to a zippy fast OnePlus 6T. In addition to the phone being faster and superior user interface ways, it maintains a much faster connection to AT&T than the old phone did. I've done speed checks one the mobile service in times I see the above issues, and verify that I've got plenty of speed (typically 25-50 Mb/s download and at least 5 Mb/s upload). My 3T rarely reported more than 20 M/s down &5 Mbps up. So, the phone itself is fast and well connected to the internet.

2. I applied a "routine" update to my ASUS RT-86U router. I suspect this may have been the cause of the problem; I've noticed some odd behavior after doing it, namely a wifi printer that used to be connected just fine would sometimes drop off. This seems to have cleared up, but it was suspicious. Also, the router lost some of my settings and I had to re-enter them to get back to where I was.

I checked and when I'm on mobile data, I can stream from my home media server fast, with no lag either in playback or populating my view of the library. So, there's no systemic problem with accessing things from remote places through my router. It's just in how it slowly passes the BI stuff.

For now I've been using port forwarding (I know, I know, please don't flame me...) for BI. I re-entered its settings in the router forwarding area and it works. Slowly. But there's probably some sort of optimization I should do to speed the outbound traffic. Are there specific router settings I should look into that might impact quickness of serving images and video to the outbound internet, presumably to the internal LAN IP of the BI server?

I'm preparing to set my system up as a VPN run by the router (OpenVPN), when I switch internet providers next month. I'll be on Metronet then, using a static IP, and planning to attach my system to a domain I bought, so I can just use the domain name if I ever want to access from a device not logged into the VPN.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
 
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fenderman

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Hi folks,

BI is up and running beautifully; has been for me since last May. Best money I ever spent.

My new issue is that when I'm out and about away from my LAN, using my cellular connection on my phone or any other device, getting the camera images to fill in or play is relatively slow, compared to how it was up until a month or so ago. The android app connects nearly instantly (~1-2 seconds at most), then leaves me at a screen that looks like this for a while; it may be 10-15 seconds before all of the camera views fill in:
View attachment 38837

Even after the views populate, if I click on any of them to start a video it probably takes about 10 seconds to start playing.

This has essentially nothing to do with BI; I'm sure it's some sort of configuration problem probably with my router.

Again, when I'm on my LAN, the images populate instantly, and videos play right away. It's like, click icon and BAM! Populated images. So, the computer and software are plenty fast. It's NOT BI being laggy.

My home connection to the internet is strong, a solid 90-100 Mb/s download with 9-10 Mb/s upload.

So, what has changed since last month? Two things:

1. I upgraded my phone from a OnePlus 3T to a zippy fast OnePlus 6T. In addition to the phone being faster and superior user interface ways, it maintains a much faster connection to AT&T than the old phone did. I've done speed checks one the mobile service in times I see the above issues, and verify that I've got plenty of speed (typically 25-50 Mb/s download and at least 5 Mb/s upload). My 3T rarely reported more than 20 M/s down &5 Mbps up. So, the phone itself is fast and well connected to the internet.

2. I applied a "routine" update to my ASUS RT-86U router. I suspect this may have been the cause of the problem; I've noticed some odd behavior after doing it, namely a wifi printer that used to be connected just fine would sometimes drop off. This seems to have cleared up, but it was suspicious. Also, the router lost some of my settings and I had to re-enter them to get back to where I was.

I checked and when I'm on mobile data, I can stream from my home media server fast, with no lag either in playback or populating my view of the library. So, there's no systemic problem with accessing things from remote places through my router. It's just in how it slowly passes the BI stuff.

For now I've been using port forwarding (I know, I know, please don't flame me...) for BI. I re-entered its settings in the router forwarding area and it works. Slowly. But there's probably some sort of optimization I should do to speed the outbound traffic. Are there specific router settings I should look into that might impact quickness of serving images and video to the outbound internet, presumably to the internal LAN IP of the BI server?

I'm preparing to set my system up as a VPN run by the router (OpenVPN), when I switch internet providers next month. I'll be on Metronet then, using a static IP, and planning to attach my system to a domain I bought, so I can just use the domain name if I ever want to access from a device not logged into the VPN.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Disable DDOS protection on the asus and test.
 

Dasstrum

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To be honest I have had the exact problems on my android phone recently too. Super slow loading times while on LTE, but as soon as I go on my VPN or wifi everything works perfect.

I thought it might be something with stunnel on my system, but havent had a chance to troubleshoot it yet. Just been using my VPN
 

Frankenscript

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Damn @fenderman , you're good. That helped a lot. Thank you. It's still a bit pokey but MUCH faster now. And, once the images fill in, they don't go away frequently like they did.

Now that you mentioned the DDOS thing, I recall turning it on when I re-set-up the router after the firmware upgrade. I think I noticed it was off and was surprised. I get about 100 "hits" on that DDOS thing per month. Mostly:
WEB GoAhead login.cgi Information Disclosure Vulnerability

Once I move to VPN, I can probably re-enable the DDOS protection, as my Android will handle the VPN very well. On my wife's iPhone I think it's more complicated and she's not techy, so telling her to connect something before going to look at the cameras is a no-go.

@Dasstrum definitely check out the DDOS protection. On my Asus router, it's in the AiProtection Two Way IPS setting. I turned it off, for now. Profit.

Thank you. fenderman, I'm amazed how you just "know this stuff" !
 

Dasstrum

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I'll definitely check into it as I too have an Asus router. But I have not made any changes or updates to it recently.
 

awsum140

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I have a Asus router, use VPN and just recently enabled DDOS. So far I haven't noticed anything different when accessing externally, but I normally do that using a WiFi connection and UI3 rather than the app.
 

Frankenscript

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I'll cap off this thread, prior to starting a new, similar thread but with a different focus (problems with my ISP causing this same issue).

So, the solution to get super fast connection to blue iris app when out and about on LTE was to make sure the ASUS router's AI protection was totally off. Any of the settings slowed BI App down terribly, though the DDOS protection was the worst offender. When I turned AI Protection entirely off in the router, while I was on Spectrum (with a 100 down/ 10 up connection) everything worked lightning fast.
What the new thread will get into is that now that I have Metronet fiber (with a static IP no less!) at 1Gbps down/250Mbps up, I'm seeing the exact sort of lag and failure to quickly populate the camera views I mentioned at the start of this thread. It's totally due to Metronet; I can pop my router back onto Spectrum (not yet cancelled) and not see the problem.

I will put lots of detail into the new thread, when I get around to dealing with it this weekend. Turning on a VPN connection to the router does fix it, but it botches other things...
 

fenderman

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I'll cap off this thread, prior to starting a new, similar thread but with a different focus (problems with my ISP causing this same issue).

So, the solution to get super fast connection to blue iris app when out and about on LTE was to make sure the ASUS router's AI protection was totally off. Any of the settings slowed BI App down terribly, though the DDOS protection was the worst offender. When I turned AI Protection entirely off in the router, while I was on Spectrum (with a 100 down/ 10 up connection) everything worked lightning fast.
What the new thread will get into is that now that I have Metronet fiber (with a static IP no less!) at 1Gbps down/250Mbps up, I'm seeing the exact sort of lag and failure to quickly populate the camera views I mentioned at the start of this thread. It's totally due to Metronet; I can pop my router back onto Spectrum (not yet cancelled) and not see the problem.

I will put lots of detail into the new thread, when I get around to dealing with it this weekend. Turning on a VPN connection to the router does fix it, but it botches other things...
Note there are several threads that discuss DDOS protection being an issue and I have confirmed it myself. I have tested the other AI protection and it works fine. There could be another variable in your setup that tricks the asus AI into thinking something is wrong.
 
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