BBC iPlayer and The 5% of Doom

[Peter314]

From time to time iPlayer pauses briefly to rebuffer and then carries on fine.

However, on other occasions it hangs at 5% rebuffering and needs fixing. The quickest fix is to put the SB into and out of standby, and then return to the program. Buffering then proceeds normally.

This happens on each of two wired SB Classics and is known in our house as The 5% of Doom. Just wondering if anyone else has suffered from this and/or knows a way of preventing it.

Thanks for any help.

Peter

Windows XP SP3
SC 7.3.4
Belkin Wireless N router (wired to SC PC and Squeezeboxes)

[bpa]

Some UK based user seems to have buufering problems with BBCiPlayer plugin related to their ISP's traffic shaping.

Are you in the UK ?
Who is your ISP ?

[Peter314]

Yes, based in the UK. My ISP is Andrews & Arnold. http://www.aaisp.net.uk/

[bpa]

You should talk to their tech support about their traffic shaping ( http://www.aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-shaping.html ) and see if they can do some testing with your setup to see if traffic shaping is causing your problems. The usual response from ISPs is that traffic shaping could not cause a buffering problem so you may need to persist.

[Peter314]

Thanks bpa, I'll do that. Their tech support is very good; you actually get to speak to someone who knows what he is talking about, and is based at their HQ in Bracknell.

Though I'd be a bit surprised if AAISP is the problem, as video streams to my pc ok, and presumably uses much greater bandwidth.

[bpa]

It's not to do with bandwidth - more to do with how packets are delivered.

Sometimes these shapers don't recognise SBS as an app that needs good packet delivery and they try to aggregate packets which means packets aren't delivered in an even flow.

[Peter314]

Thanks - that will help me sound more informed in my discussion.

[andynormancx]

In this case it is definitely not traffic shaping. A&A do zero traffic shaping on their network, it is one of their key selling points.

I am on A&A and I don't have any iPlayer buffering problems. Do you have the same buffering problems with using iPlayer via the iPlayer website ?

[bpa]

I can only suggestions and the A&A website said it was trialling traffic shaping in Jul/August 2009.

Buffering is network related and since PC is doing transcoding the AAC will be transcoded into Flac so if the user is using Wifi then user wireless network would be the next suspect.

However, on other occasions it hangs at 5% rebuffering and needs fixing. The quickest fix is to put the SB into and out of standby, and then return to the program. Buffering then proceeds normally.

Have you tried using Pause - wait a about 10 secs and then play ?

[andynormancx]

I can only suggestions and the A&A website said it was trialling traffic shaping in Jul/August 2009.

What they are trialling is traffic shaping that the user can opt into, to allow users to prioritise things like VOIP at the ISP end.