Bad connection Europe

[andrew55551]

I'm hoping someone having the same issues could give me some tips.

I live in Europe, so I'm assuming that's the main cause. Quite often I have periods in which most cams are not watchable. They lag up an awful lot. Sometimes it's worse, and then the homepage doesn't even load properly (the model thumbnails come up very slowly).

I've tried everything:

• Clearing cache, different browser, different Flash installation, different computer
• Resetting the router, the modem, changing DNS (for the thumbnails, it used to have issues loading a lot of small images)
• Checking other people's upload/download (not a lot), even blocking them for an instance to see if that would have any effect
• Tried a different internet connection (my mobile one), which comes from a completely different provider

I used to have a perfect connection, and I still do now and again. Then all cams stream perfectly. I'm out of options here. Anyone had this issue and managed to solve it? Or have the MFC servers just been busier than usual this past month? I'm going to assume they only have some in the US, as I can't imagine such a crappy connection to servers closeby.

Thanks!

 

[Bipo]

Been speaking about this in L10K a bit.. It seems as though you're not alone. I can have a perfect connection for 6 hours and then all of a sudden unwatchable cams on every model, there are a few others having similar issues from UK (not sure if you're european or Uk) I can only think of it being a Mfc server issue.

Archive streams seem to be going at an alltime low too.. Been like this for a week, got to the point I will not buy tokens on mfc as I cannot enjoy whatever I'd be tipping for, reported it to Mfc's support and they just blame my ISP / PC (my Pc is brand new and I have high end virgin media fibre) Mfc have an issue and they're not admitting it unfortunately!

 

[BigElectricCat]

MFC's hosted in Seattle, which is a well-connected city since Microsoft, Adobe and just about every other tech company has operations there.

However, there are a number of things that can turn MFC feeds to hash in short order.

First, Flash's internal hardware acceleration for video is crap. MFC used to recommend disabling it as a blanket recommendation and it's still probably a good idea.

Two, your computer may be part of the problem. My MacBook Air has no problems with most things, but when using Wi-Fi to watch MFC, it sputters and freezes like a perv seeing AmberCutie topless for the first time. I owe it to the placement of the Mac's built-in antenna, and the location of the router (my garage, where the signal has to penetrate a firewall and several interior walls). My AppleTV doesn't pose the same problem with Netflix, so that incriminates the Mac's aluminum shell. I ended up getting better results with a USB-to-Ethernet adapter plugged into a switch. Also, the GPU may be a contributing factor. The MacBook Air's Intel HD4000 graphics unit uses system processor resources that can result in a performance hit. A dedicated nVidia or Radeon GPU will work better when you scale the cam window upwards.

While you may be well-connected (for example, parts of Ukraine have fiber-to-the-premise that rivals anything Verizon offers here), and MFC may be as well, the points in between may not be so hot, especially if you're in western Europe but find your route to MFC includes several points in the Asia-Pacific region rather than a more-direct trans-Atlantic route. Your connection is only as good as your slowest hop. The 'traceroute' command (or 'tracert' under Windows) can help you diagnose these kinds of problems. If you use a VPN service for privacy or to bypass regional restrictions, that may send your traffic across a slower path. Likewise, switching to a VPN tunnel may give you a faster path if your connectivity to the VPN provider is good, and its connectivity to MFC is fast as well.

I can have a perfect connection for 6 hours and then all of a sudden unwatchable cams on every model, there are a few others having similar issues from UK (not sure if you're european or Uk) I can only think of it being a Mfc server issue.

I wouldn't necessarily call that an issue with MFC's servers. Last night, routes to MFC fell out of a lot of ISP core routers (including AT&T's), resulting in a number of models and perves getting knocked out. At least one model needed twenty minutes to get her feed going again after that. She was seriously disappointed. Did I contact MFC support? Of course not. I really didn't want to hear one of their non-answers, and knew that if there were a real problem, the frontline support droids would be simply running interference until the network engineers fixed the real problem.

 

[andrew55551]

Can't be Flash' hardware acceleration or anything like Wifi positioning or a bad antennae if it wasn't like this a few months ago. This also rules out hardware like the video processing unit etc.

I only have 3 hops near me (ISP stuff), then one in Germany (which is the case with all connections most of the time), then straight to Washington (MFC server). No awkward routing. I'll try a VPN anyway, just to see what happens if I use another route.

15 minutes after posting this topic it suddenly went from unwatchable to perfect for any model on MFC. It doesn't even seem to be related to internet primetime.

 

[yossarian]

Bad Connection Europe would be an awesome band name. Or a really bad camgirl name.