Can we use commercial line (cable, dsl) to connect?
Hi guys!
I want to connect to the venue from home.
I have all services (venue, reflector, archiver) installed in my lab at the university. Everything works perfectly if I test the connection locally (within the lab).
When I tried to connect from home, it's a mess. From home, I can see everyone in the venue, I can hear and the picture quality is good. But the people in the venue (who connects from the lab) are not able to see me (the picture quality is bad, full of blocks etc) and are not able to hear me (the sound quality is choppy).
So my question is: is there any way to solve this problem?
If I need to open some ports, which ports should I open/close at the venue server, reflector server, and archive server?
Answers
Hi Andi,
You have made 2 contradictory statements (if you use my definitions) so I need to clarify something with you...
You said - The people in the lab can not see me (in other words they don't receive *any* data from me). The video and audio they receive from me are poor.
Those are 2 completely different problems. If I understand correctly, they actually can see and hear you, but the quality is poor. This means that the Reflector and all CXP components are working correctly.
You are most probably running into the asymmetric network problem. Your upload speed (like most home connections) is much less than your download speed - 3Mb/256Kb. You need to drastically scale down your video (or remove it completely) and only send audio. Then they should be able to hear you just fine.
Another potential problem is that your machine is pegged at 100% CPU trying to do the encoding of your video and decoding all the incoming streams. It takes pretty beefy machines to handle all that. So check your CPU utilization as well and adjust your video / audio appropriately.
JVE
All Replies
Hi Andi,
You have made 2 contradictory statements (if you use my definitions) so I need to clarify something with you...
You said - The people in the lab can not see me (in other words they don't receive *any* data from me). The video and audio they receive from me are poor.
Those are 2 completely different problems. If I understand correctly, they actually can see and hear you, but the quality is poor. This means that the Reflector and all CXP components are working correctly.
You are most probably running into the asymmetric network problem. Your upload speed (like most home connections) is much less than your download speed - 3Mb/256Kb. You need to drastically scale down your video (or remove it completely) and only send audio. Then they should be able to hear you just fine.
Another potential problem is that your machine is pegged at 100% CPU trying to do the encoding of your video and decoding all the incoming streams. It takes pretty beefy machines to handle all that. So check your CPU utilization as well and adjust your video / audio appropriately.
JVE
Thank you!
It seems that the problem is indeed the asymmetric network problem. We're testing several resolution right now to find the one that works best.
Is it possible to also adjust the sound quality?
Andi Saptono
Andi,
You can adjust the bandwidth utilized by audio under "Settings", "Audio/Video...", and then "Advanced Settings" in the Audio group.
However, the default bandwidth is only 20 kbps so you're more likely to see audio improvements by reducing video bandwidth in a network bandwidth constrained environment. My first test is always to simply turn off sending video and build back up from there to see what my network connection can sustain.
-Todd
