Orange streaming delayed symbol - need help troubleshooting or ideas

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
Here is a summary of my BI network setup:
Spectrum internet, solid 240Mbps down, 30mbps up. Main router WRT1900AC, second router WRT1900AC (set up as an access point) and another, AP: Unifi AP.
I have about 45 devices (wired and wireless) connected. Most of them (90%) are connect only as needed and usually briefly (ie: internet clocks, alexa, Guest TV, etc.)
The connected devices are purposely spread out mostly equally among the two access points and main router.
The BI computer is a stand alone Windows 10 box that primarily runs BI, it is an Acer Aspire XC605, i7 4790.
I have 14 cameras on my BI system and I watch my CPU usage/average like a hawk, it usually fluctuates around 18-45%, depending on if I'm doing something with BI at the time.
I'd say about 6 of my cameras are POE, 6 wireless connected to my AP, and maybe 2 regular wired connected to a switch.
I normally view my cameras (live/clips) via the BI UI3 web session on a pc connected to the same network.
Here is an example... I'm viewing a camera that is connected to my Unifi AP. It is a solid wifi connection because the Unifi wifi connection shows 99% for this camera, yet I occasionally and regularly get the orange "stream delayed" symbol and the screen freezes. Of course I tried lowering the resolution to see if it helps, it doesn't.
So, as an example, of above, I check my CPU usage on BI computer, it's around 20%, my Unifi AP connection to the camera is 99-100%, my internet speeds up/dl are solid as mentioned above, BI software is current, ...
Where do I look to figure out what causes these obvious bottle necks?
I should also mention that I can remotely check on other internet connected devices at that time (ie: Tivo, ecobee thermostat, plex, etc.) and don't have any pauses, disconnects or lag issues with them. This makes me feel I need to look to my BI computer, which is hard wired directly to my main router.
Sorry for the lengthy question but thought if I was to solicit ideas it was better to provide more info at least initially.
 

wittaj

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Apr 28, 2019
Messages
24,428
Reaction score
47,544
Location
USA
Wifi is problematic for surveillance cameras whether you use BI or not because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to use it through a wifi router. Someone tested this once and after 4 cameras, the wifi was unusable...

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes. Now do the same with a wifi camera and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues.

Most of us here have all of our cameras not going through the router. They are all isolated and do not pass through the router. The few that do use wifi have it on a separate system like a nanostation so that they data is not going through the main house router and all cameras are on a different IP address range than the rest of the home LAN.
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
Wifi is problematic for surveillance cameras whether you use BI or not because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to use it through a wifi router. Someone tested this once and after 4 cameras, the wifi was unusable...

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes. Now do the same with a wifi camera and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues.

Most of us here have all of our cameras not going through the router. They are all isolated and do not pass through the router. The few that do use wifi have it on a separate system like a nanostation so that they data is not going through the main house router and all cameras are on a different IP address range than the rest of the home LAN.
Thanks for the detailed explanation...
2 questions.
Would increasing the buffer size to, say, 20-50mb, for each camera in BI help with this?
Would a better solution be to put in another POE switch just for wired camera connections only and then for wireless cameras have them all go through the Unfi AP and connect the wired part of the Unifi AP to the isolated POE switch, or something similar?
It sounds like you're saying I should segregate the cameras on their own network but won't that network ultimately be connected to my main router and still cause issues? Sorry if I'm being dense, trying to make this work in my head.
 

wittaj

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Apr 28, 2019
Messages
24,428
Reaction score
47,544
Location
USA
Increasing the buffer in BI only helps with the data within BI - the issue you have is dropped packets through your network before the feed even makes it to the BI computer.

So the easiest way that most of us have done is a dual NIC system - so the BI computer has two ethernet cards in it - one card goes to the home router for internet access. The other card has all of the cameras connected to it. And then the IP addresses are different for each system. So the internet is say 192.168.1.X and the cameras are all on 10.1.1.X as an example.

That card can be added for less than $20.

You would connect all the cameras to the same switch as the BI computer. This switch is not wired or connected to the router. If you have to use wifi cameras, then put them on their own router that is connected to this same switch.

It doesn't mean that you still will not have issues, but if nothing else is on that router than the cameras and you are not getting interference from other electronic devices, you stand a much better chance of the cameras not dropping than by having everything go thru the main router, which is basically what you have happening now.

 

SouthernYankee

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Feb 15, 2018
Messages
5,170
Reaction score
5,320
Location
Houston Tx
Six wifi cameras will need two separate wired wifi access points. These access points are for cameras only.. If your main wifi is channel 6 then use channel 1 and 11 for the two access points. Use a unique SSID for the cameras like CAMCAM. I use ASUS RT-N12D1 as it is only 2.4 GHZ and is inexpensive.

Make sure absolutely NO local video traffic runs through the router.
If possible use a Duel NIC on the BI PC.
===========================
Some wifi setup advice:

  • When setting up a 2.4 GHz wifi network, you must only choose from channels 1, 6, and 11. This helps achieve the most efficient usage of the radio frequencies. Consider channels 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 to be off-limits. This is because a wifi network does not actually use only one channel. The one you pick is only the center frequency, with the network using several channels to the left and right of it. If everybody follows the 1, 6, 11 rule, then you get three non-overlapping networks. If anyone in the area breaks the rule, then you only get two non-overlapping networks at best, and some of the available frequency at the edges of the spectrum goes to waste.
  • When configuring a second access point for cameras, it should be configured to use a different channel than the main network (remember: channels 1, 6, or 11 only).
  • Do not trust your access point to choose a channel automatically, as a poorly designed access point may choose one of the off-limits channels.
  • Some 2.4 GHz wifi access points can be configured to use 40 MHz of spectrum instead of the usual 20 MHz. If you see such an option in your access point, make sure it is configured to use 20 MHz, not 40 MHz. This is to reduce the interference caused and received by the network. 40 MHz networks only work well in controlled areas where nothing else is using 2.4 GHz radio frequencies.
  • To aid in choosing channels to run your networks on, you can download a wifi scanner app on your phone to get an idea of what other 2.4 GHz wifi networks are active in your area, and see what channels they are on. Note however that such apps are not perfect. They can't detect interference that is not from another wifi network. They can't tell you how "busy" each channel actually is. And typically they show 40 MHz networks as a 20 MHz network. So you really only see part of the picture, but part is better than nothing.

============================
I have posted this before.
I did a wifi test a while back with multiple 2MP cameras each camera was set to VBR, 15 FPS, 15 Iframe, 3072kbs, h.264. Using a wifi analyzer I selected the least busy channel (1,6,11) on the 2.4 GHZ band and set up a separate SSID and access point. With 3 cameras in direct line of sight of the AP about 25 feet away I was able to maintain a reasonable stable network with only intermittent signal drops from the cameras. Added a 4th camera and the network became totally unstable. Also add a lot of motion to the 3 cameras caused some more network instability. More data more instability.
The cameras are nearly continuously transmitting. So any lost packet causes a retry, which cause more traffic, which causes more lost packets.
Wifi does not have a flow control, or a token to transmit. So you devices transmit any time they want, more devices more collisions.
As a side note, it is very easy to jam a wifi network. Wifi is find for watching the bird feed but not for home surveillance and security.
The problem is like standing in a room, with multiple people talking to you at the same time about different subjects. You need to answer each person or they repeat the question.

Test do not guess.

For a 802.11G 2.4 GHZ wifi network the Theoretical Speed is 54Mbps (6.7MBs) real word speed is nearer to 10-29Mbps (1.25-3.6 MBs) for a single channel

============================
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
Increasing the buffer in BI only helps with the data within BI - the issue you have is dropped packets through your network before the feed even makes it to the BI computer.

So the easiest way that most of us have done is a dual NIC system - so the BI computer has two ethernet cards in it - one card goes to the home router for internet access. The other card has all of the cameras connected to it. And then the IP addresses are different for each system. So the internet is say 192.168.1.X and the cameras are all on 10.1.1.X as an example.

That card can be added for less than $20.

You would connect all the cameras to the same switch as the BI computer. This switch is not wired or connected to the router. If you have to use wifi cameras, then put them on their own router that is connected to this same switch.

It doesn't mean that you still will not have issues, but if nothing else is on that router than the cameras and you are not getting interference from other electronic devices, you stand a much better chance of the cameras not dropping than by having everything go thru the main router, which is basically what you have happening now.

Thanks. I will look into this when I get home from my trip!!
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
One last question, if I use another nic card in the BI machine with a different subnet and of course I change all of the ips on the cams to match that subnet, how will they communicate with the BI machine if my router is set for my original subnet? Do I need to add a new router with the new subnet or can my main router handle two different subnets?
Also, do you have a recommendation on a nic card, been ages since I bought one.
 

SouthernYankee

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Feb 15, 2018
Messages
5,170
Reaction score
5,320
Location
Houston Tx
the BI computer has two nics, so it has two IP addresses. The BI second nic is plug into a switch, with in turn is plugged into your camera wifi access points, the camera POE switch. All access on the second NIC are static.

The first NIC is plugged into a switch, with in turn is plugged into your router.
Any cheap NIC card on Amazon will work (less than $20)., just make sure your mother board has an open slot for it.

My main router is plugged into a switch, and plugged into incoming wired internet. There are no other traffic going directly through the router except the local non-camera wifi.
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
the BI computer has two nics, of it has two !P addresses. The BI second nic is plug into a switch, with in turn is plugged into your camera wifi access point the camera POE switch. All access on the second NIC are static.

The first NIC is plugged into a switch, with in turn is plugged into your router.
Any cheap NIC card on Amazon will work (less than $20)., just make sure your mother board has an open slot for it.

My main router is plugged into a switch, and plugged into incoming wired internet. There are no other traffic going directly through the router except the local non-camera wifi.
THanks everyone for some great info and advice. Now I can't wait to get home to try this out!
 
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
7,386
Reaction score
25,889
Location
Spring, Texas
Have you always had this issue? Or did it just start happening? I had this issue when I upgraded from BI 5.4.5.3 to 5.4.6.x, so I reverted to 5.4.5.3 and it is fine again.

As far as the dual NIC issue, that is how I run my network. I bought the Intel EXPI9301CTBLK for $32 back in 2018 as my second NIC.

Below is a graphic to help you. You do not need a router in the cam sub-net mix.

Network Topology 0B.JPG

If you have a second PC that you would like to access the cams from, you could set it up just as I have below. My office PC has two motherboard mounted NICs, but you could put a second NIC card in that one also.
Network Topology 1.JPG

If you do not want to go the dual-NIC route, you can still isolate the cam traffic from the router as shown below.
Network Topology 2.JPG
 

looney2ns

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Sep 25, 2016
Messages
15,521
Reaction score
22,657
Location
Evansville, In. USA
All answered in the Wiki


Make certain you have performed every step in this: Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
Have you always had this issue? Or did it just start happening? I had this issue when I upgraded from BI 5.4.5.3 to 5.4.6.x, so I reverted to 5.4.5.3 and it is fine again.

As far as the dual NIC issue, that is how I run my network. I bought the Intel EXPI9301CTBLK for $32 back in 2018 as my second NIC.

Below is a graphic to help you. You do not need a router in the cam sub-net mix.

View attachment 91521

If you have a second PC that you would like to access the cams from, you could set it up just as I have below. My office PC has two motherboard mounted NICs, but you could put a second NIC card in that one also.
View attachment 91522

If you do not want to go the dual-NIC route, you can still isolate the cam traffic from the router as shown below.
View attachment 91523
No, I have not always had this issue, I think it became more noticable when I started adding more devices and cameras, in the last year or so.
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
Have you always had this issue? Or did it just start happening? I had this issue when I upgraded from BI 5.4.5.3 to 5.4.6.x, so I reverted to 5.4.5.3 and it is fine again.

As far as the dual NIC issue, that is how I run my network. I bought the Intel EXPI9301CTBLK for $32 back in 2018 as my second NIC.

Below is a graphic to help you. You do not need a router in the cam sub-net mix.

View attachment 91521

If you have a second PC that you would like to access the cams from, you could set it up just as I have below. My office PC has two motherboard mounted NICs, but you could put a second NIC card in that one also.
View attachment 91522

If you do not want to go the dual-NIC route, you can still isolate the cam traffic from the router as shown below.
View attachment 91523
samplenhold, I am going with your #1 diagram, 2 nics in the BI machine. I just bought a second nic and installed it but have some questions.
My primary nic in the BI machine is 192.168.0.x. and it connects to my main router via a non-managed switch.
I'd like to set the second nic (that will connect to a new managed switch with VLAN to 192.168.1.x
What should I use in the second nic's gateway and DNS settings? Should I used the same addresses that's in my primary nic?
Thanks for the diagrams, they sure helped!
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
This is what mine looks like and no matter what I type in, it doesn't like it :)
Now, I don't currently have an ethernet cable connected to it yet but I don't think that should matter.

Capture.JPG
 
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
7,386
Reaction score
25,889
Location
Spring, Texas
OK, try it this way:
From Settings/Network & Internet, select Ethernet on the left. Then select 'Change adapter options' top right.
Highlight the adapter you want to setup and right click to bring up the pop up below. Select 'Properties' at the bottom.
1623358763947.png

That will bring up the following popup on the left. Highlight 'Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) which is second from the bottom in the diagram below. This will allow you to select 'Properties' which will bring up the popup on the right.
1623358967854.png
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
Samplenhold,
Duh, that worked. I wrongly assumed since it didn't work one way it wouldn't work that way.
Thanks!
I have a 48port managed switch coming in Sunday and will work with that but, if I connected a cable to this card and my unmanaged switch, then I could change each camera to a new address in the 192.168.1.x subnet and that should work, right?
Then I guess I go into BI and change each camera to the new subnet?
Any tips regarding this would be appreciated.
I guess I'm assuming that BI would "see" any address in my old 192.168.0.x or the new 192.168.1.x subnet, right?
 
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
7,386
Reaction score
25,889
Location
Spring, Texas
So you will have two subnets, 0 and 1 (192.168.0.x and 192.168.1.x). Which position is the unmanaged switch in, based on the diagram? Is it the black switch hung off of the modem/router, or is it the red switch hung off the BI PC?

Yes if you have the BI PC connected through two different ethernet connections to subnets 0 & 1, then any cams on either subnet will bee seen by BI.

The IP addresses of any equipment hung off of the black switch in the diagram (which is hung off the router) will be assigned dynamic addresses by the router. You could manually assign IP addresses to some equipment there, like cams, but you need to make sure that they are in an address range that the router will not use.

IP addresses of equipment hung off of the red switch really should be manually assigned. I keep a spreadsheet of the assignments.
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
So you will have two subnets, 0 and 1 (192.168.0.x and 192.168.1.x). Which position is the unmanaged switch in, based on the diagram? Is it the black switch hung off of the modem/router, or is it the red switch hung off the BI PC?

Yes if you have the BI PC connected through two different ethernet connections to subnets 0 & 1, then any cams on either subnet will bee seen by BI.

The IP addresses of any equipment hung off of the black switch in the diagram (which is hung off the router) will be assigned dynamic addresses by the router. You could manually assign IP addresses to some equipment there, like cams, but you need to make sure that they are in an address range that the router will not use.

IP addresses of equipment hung off of the red switch really should be manually assigned. I keep a spreadsheet of the assignments.
Right now the unmanaged switch would be hanging off of the router. I also keep a spreadsheet of IP addresses that I assign, but there are probably about 15 or 10 that are DHCP for one reason or another. All of my cameras except for one are static ips. So my plan was to test this out by connecting the unmanaged switch directly to that network card and then assigning the new ips to each camera. When I get the new manage to switch in I plan on setting up a VLAN just for those cameras with that IP address range. Or, that's the plan, until it's not :)
 

marklyn

Pulling my weight
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
457
Reaction score
105
I should mention that my issue has been resolved by upgrading to a new (Much faster/stronger) AX6000 router. It's reasonable to assume my old router just couldn't keep up with the traffic going through it. Everything works very well now, no more orange clocks.
 
Top