Less Bandwidth?

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I'm going on the record that I run our ROKU wireless, with the wireless remote. I have exactly one of them and it puts itself on the same exact channel as the wifi access point it is connected to to talk to the wifi remote. The two signals constantly interfere with each other on my wireless, and I have only 1. Looks like you have 3, so maybe start with hard wiring those, even if only temporary, to see if it helps with the wifi problem. If it does, then you probably need to have someone come run a wallplate for those devices at least.

When a ROKU is hard wired, then the device will pick an unoccupied wifi channel to talk with the remote, but it must only have a single transmitter because if you are connected wireless it stays on the same channel and puts out mad signal.
 

CastleSurveillance

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I'm going on the record that I run our ROKU wireless, with the wireless remote. I have exactly one of them and it puts itself on the same exact channel as the wifi access point it is connected to to talk to the wifi remote. The two signals constantly interfere with each other on my wireless, and I have only 1. Looks like you have 3, so maybe start with hard wiring those, even if only temporary, to see if it helps with the wifi problem. If it does, then you probably need to have someone come run a wallplate for those devices at least.

When a ROKU is hard wired, then the device will pick an unoccupied wifi channel to talk with the remote, but it must only have a single transmitter because if you are connected wireless it stays on the same channel and puts out mad signal.
So I have the wireless remotes that come with them? Not WiFi remotes - not sure if those are the same things or not.
 

wittaj

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OK so your router IP is 192.168.39.1

What is the make and model of the router?

What is the oldest wifi device on your system - a device connected by 802.11b for example will slow the whole system down. Try setting the wifi to ac or n and see if anything drops off.

Your phone on a 169. IP range - is that on a guest wifi or is that actually cellular and not connected to your wifi?

Is the switch a managed or unmanaged switch? How many connections come off the switch - just the NVR or something else?

Looking at it, I think you have a lot going on through that router - when I had a 16 cam NVR going into my router like you, I was shocked how much slower it made the internet speed (50mbps) and these were low resolution cams compared to what I have now. Also the Roku's and all the smart devices will consume bandwidth too even if not on, and when on...

Basically you have every device going through your router and even if not accessing them at the moment, it has traffic going through it.

Ultimately it comes down to whether you want to go to the effort to isolate these with a VLAN switch and truly isolate the NVR from the internet and access it remotely via a VPN or let the system be as it is and live with decrease in internet speed.

Maybe, but unlikely, is that you have a router that is just severely under-powered and running 15 wifi devices and a 12 camera NVR through it is too much and upgrading to a newer one would help, but recognize that the NVR attached to it will still slow down the internet speed.
 
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If they control the roku while pointed at a pillow inbetween the remote and roku, they're the wireless kind I'm talking about.

Also are the individual mesh router points throughout the home hard wired back to the central unit or are they using one of the wifi channels to backhaul the data? That wireless link is likely to come at half-performance.

If you can, start with a speed test with a direct connection to the LAN port on the back of the MESH that is directly connected to your modem. That will tell you your top-end performance, and WiFi probably won't reach those speeds unless they are really slow. Direct connect the ROKU's all to the switch and set them up as networked, just to rule out their contribution to the problem temporarily. Unplug all the mesh routers, except the main one until you are done testing your speeds on that device (wired and wireless), and then start adding things back to the system one by one.
 
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CastleSurveillance

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OK so your router IP is 192.168.39.1

What is the make and model of the router?

What is the oldest wifi device on your system - a device connected by 802.11b for example will slow the whole system down. Try setting the wifi to ac or n and see if anything drops off.

Your phone on a 169. IP range - is that on a guest wifi or is that actually cellular and not connected to your wifi?

Is the switch a managed or unmanaged switch? How many connections come off the switch - just the NVR or something else?

Looking at it, I think you have a lot going on through that router - when I had a 16 cam NVR going into my router like you, I was shocked how much slower it made the internet speed (50mbps) and these were low resolution cams compared to what I have now. Also the Roku's and all the smart devices will consume bandwidth too even if not on, and when on...

Basically you have every device going through your router and even if not accessing them at the moment, it has traffic going through it.

Ultimately it comes down to whether you want to go to the effort to isolate these with a VLAN switch and truly isolate the NVR from the internet and access it remotely via a VPN or let the system be as it is and live with decrease in internet speed.

Maybe, but unlikely, is that you have a router that is just severely under-powered and running 15 wifi devices and a 12 camera NVR through it is too much and upgrading to a newer one would help, but recognize that the NVR attached to it will still slow down the internet speed.
This is a meshforce version 3 router. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a web based UI, only an app on my phone. I cannot find an option to drop older devices, however, most of the equipment I have around here is newer.

The cell phone that is 169 is peculiar for sure. I think that’s my wife’s.

Unmanaged switch. Just the NVR coming off the switch.

I just spent about a grand to upgrade to ubiquiti stuff throughout this house - are we thinking this may be a solution? That’s an awful lot of money to not work.
 

CastleSurveillance

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Update - nothing’s changed. My WiFi speed was just 195MBPS - now I ran it a couple minutes later and I’m at 5MBPS.

What could cause such wild fluctuations in speed? I made sure idmss was not open.
 

biggen

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I'm still going with the mesh. Dump it and move to the dedicated APs. Problem solved...
 
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I can’t disagree that the new equipment should be at a higher level, but if you aren’t willing to do some easy troubleshooting steps like I recommended then if your new network doesn’t work perfectly you’ll be out all that money and still have unsatisfactory WiFi performance.
 

CastleSurveillance

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Have you tried anything I recommended above?
That's far more than I want to tackle at this time, Especially since I've already decided I'm going with ubiquiti and dumping this router. That, and removing the Roku's aren't really an option for me - I stream my cable through them, and my unfortunately, my smart tv's are unable to do it without the Rokus.
 

wittaj

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Is one of the ubiquiti devices coming a vlan router?

Who is your internet provider - cable or telephone company? There will be fluctuations in speed regardless, but I don't think it would be as drastic as you have seen. It is evident that either your current router and associated peripherals are not able to keep up with your demand, a slow device is bogging the whole thing down, or maybe your wifi is picking up a lot of interference from neighbors and changing the channel would help.

What internet speed are you paying for?

Just for kicks with the Roku devices - go in to each and do a check connection run and report back with internet speeds those are seeing. I have one in a far corner of the house on a small tv that was slowing my system down, so I "downgraded" the display image and on a 24" tv you really cannot tell the difference between 720 and 1080 and it bumped it back up. I then went to the other TVs and bumped those down as well and I cannot tell a difference.
 
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No problem, I didn’t say you’d have to give up ROKU just that you should isolate the problem through a little testing. I wish you luck.
 

pozzello

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You never mentioned the model of the NVR or cams, other than 'Dahua', (may or may not matter, but it's still missing info about your setup).

Please check whether you have 'multicast' and/or 'platform access' enabled on your NVR.
Screenshots from one of my Dahua IP cams (I have no Dahua NVR), but NVR config maybe be similar...

dahua_platform_config.PNGdahua_multicast_config.PNG
 

CastleSurveillance

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You never mentioned the model of the NVR or cams, other than 'Dahua', (may or may not matter, but it's still missing info about your setup).

Please check whether you have 'multicast' and/or 'platform access' enabled on your NVR.
Screenshots from one of my Dahua IP cams (I have no Dahua NVR), but NVR config maybe be similar...

View attachment 62220View attachment 62221
oh man, I have so many cam's on this house - they're all different. They're all 4MP, with the exception of one Two-way talk at the front door which is 5MP, and a 2MP auto-tracking PTZ.

In regards to Multicast - no, it is not enabled.
 

CastleSurveillance

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Is one of the ubiquiti devices coming a vlan router?

Who is your internet provider - cable or telephone company? There will be fluctuations in speed regardless, but I don't think it would be as drastic as you have seen. It is evident that either your current router and associated peripherals are not able to keep up with your demand, a slow device is bogging the whole thing down, or maybe your wifi is picking up a lot of interference from neighbors and changing the channel would help.

What internet speed are you paying for?

Just for kicks with the Roku devices - go in to each and do a check connection run and report back with internet speeds those are seeing. I have one in a far corner of the house on a small tv that was slowing my system down, so I "downgraded" the display image and on a 24" tv you really cannot tell the difference between 720 and 1080 and it bumped it back up. I then went to the other TVs and bumped those down as well and I cannot tell a difference.
Included w/ the Ubiquiti order is:
2x Ubiquiti Pro's
1x Ubiquiti Mesh
1x Ubiquiti USG
1x Ubiquiti 8 port POE Switch

Cable internet is Comcast. Think we're paying for 150MB.

I'll try to check on the Roku's later today.
 

pozzello

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you are barking up the wrong tree chasing all this wireless configuration stuff. That has ZERO to do with your issue of bandwidth used.

you already identified the issue when you said "... idmss was open on the background of my phone. Closed the app & we're at 120MB... ".

Of course, when you view streams remotely using that cloud-based service, you will incur internet bandwidth usage. this can be minimized by lowering frame and/or bit rates, using secondary (lower rez) streams for remote viewing, etc...

If running the app when your phone is on your local LAN still causes INTERNET bandwidth usage, then the app is simply not configured properly to pull the streams directly from the NVR when you are also local, and it's still going out to pull the streams from the cloud, essentially DOUBLING the bandwidth used, as you are pushing it up and pullling it back down.

The solution to your issues is in the app's usage and configuration, and the NVR's configuration for the sizes of these pulled streams. You need to understand/tune your settings, not add more equipment.
 

SouthernYankee

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More or different hardware will NOT fix your problem.
You problem is 100% your configuration.
Provide a drawing with most of your equipment. Include Local IP address, manufacture and model number of all equipment, indicate in the drawing if the connection is wireless or wired.

===============================
Private ip addresses. Local IP addresses. These addresses are NOT used by the internet. They are for your local home/business network.
10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255
 

CastleSurveillance

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you are barking up the wrong tree chasing all this wireless configuration stuff. That has ZERO to do with your issue of bandwidth used.

you already identified the issue when you said "... idmss was open on the background of my phone. Closed the app & we're at 120MB... ".

Of course, when you view streams remotely using that cloud-based service, you will incur internet bandwidth usage. this can be minimized by lowering frame and/or bit rates, using secondary (lower rez) streams for remote viewing, etc...

If running the app when your phone is on your local LAN still causes INTERNET bandwidth usage, then the app is simply not configured properly to pull the streams directly from the NVR when you are also local, and it's still going out to pull the streams from the cloud, essentially DOUBLING the bandwidth used, as you are pushing it up and pullling it back down.

The solution to your issues is in the app's usage and configuration, and the NVR's configuration for the sizes of these pulled streams. You need to understand/tune your settings, not add more equipment.
Pozzello,

that was initially what I thought to be the problem... however, continuing to check this bandwidth even with idmss closed, I am still getting very wild fluctuations in bandwidth, with no real reason why.. idmss closed or open, same issue occurs.
 
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