Upload speeds not as advertised; unable to stream to Twitch.tv - Ultimate Internet Package
I am a Twitch Affiliate in the Las Vegas area who has been actively trying to increase the quality of my stream, but am held back by my poor upload speeds.
Been a customer for years now, and over the last year I have had issues with my upload speed. I currently have the Ultimate Package (300down/30up), and my actual upload speed (when tested on ANY other website than speedtest.net, the only speed test that cox recognizes) is often below 5mbps, making it nearly impossible to stream at 720p 60fps (quality standard).
I've had multiple visits from techs, supervisors, and level 2 support that have told me they don't see anything wrong with my connection and that the signals seem strong. I've actually shown them by program that I use to stream (OBS) and another program that actually tests my upload speed to the various twitch ingest servers (TwitchTest), but I've been told multiple times that my speeds are not guaranteed and Cox will only guarantee speeds within their network. In fact, I actually have had a supervisor tell me that there are over 500+ people on my "node", which are usually meant for only 200-300, but there was nothing that could be done about that.
There are DOZENS of other threads that I've read like this over years of very similar situations. In some cases, some of them are actually Twitch streamers who live in Las Vegas. This issue is not new.
I understand the argument that Cox can only be in control of pings and traffic that are within their network, but that really only makes sense to me when talking about download speeds, which honestly I could care less about (and don't actually matter because you will only ever receive data as fast as outside servers can send). If you think about what upload speed is, and what upload speed is for, why on earth can you argue that you can only guarantee the upload speed to Cox servers. Do you think Amazon, Valve, and Google have their servers in the Cox infrastructure? It's absurd and actually insulting to hear.
Now, there was a time where when my upload speed was fine. The google speed test was reporting upload speeds of 30mbps. This tells me that it is possible for these tests to actually report correct numbers. My twitch ingest server tests would also report good readings, which allowed me to upload as much bitrate to Twitch as I needed. But then one night, about a year ago, there was an outage in my area. After everything was back up, my upload speed has never been the same.
Again, since then, I've had multiple visits from techs and calls with support to try and resolve. I pretty much gave up, but last night my upload speed was actually only stable at around 1-2mbps, which is absolutely unacceptable based on what I am paying for.
The router I am using is the ARRIS SB6183. I've actually contacted them as well and they advised me that my upstream channel strength might not be in the correct range, and that an attenuator might help. I actually suggested this to one of the techs that came out, and he told me it wouldn't help and refused to actually try it.
it might be worth actually filing a complaint with the FCC to try and get something done about this, unless there is someone qualified that can help.
Thanks
-Shane
