Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
Hello all
I've been looking at a really annoying streaming video quality issue for the past few weeks which i've tracked down to seemingly being an issue with video served from akamai. For example channel5, seems to hit akadash0.akamaized.net and a traceroute ends at a virgin media address of cur1-melt2-0-0-cust128.12-1.cable.virginm.net (213.106.24.129) From my investigation it seems to be this cache is congested and causing the streaming quality to drop. Was hoping someone else more in the know could tell me if i'm onto something here or way off, i don't fancy my chances raising this with CS :D TIA! |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
I'll pick this up if you can provide some evidence, and a way to recreate it.
Can anyone else recreate this? By the way, that reverse DNS lookup isn't correct, though that isn't the cause of your problem. I guess they have reused an old Melton Mowbray IP address but forgot to update the DNS. I can confirm 213.106.24.129 is actually a link to Akamai from VM in Manchester. |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
Have you tried changing the route by changing the DNS server or trying a VPN
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Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
Yeah so if I use cloudflare warp, everything is good.
SP what else can I provide to help? I can reproduce it on my5 and itv hub, I'll try and find out if there's any other on demand that uses akamai and check if I can recreate it there too |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
What device are you running My5 and ITVHub on? Can you quantify the quality drop? Does it only happen at certain times of day? Also please name some specific assets that show the fault.
BBC iPlayer certainly used to use Akamai, but I don't know if they still do. |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
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I've recreated it on my5 chrome on my laptop, using the dev console i can see the segments it's requesting end in "1500" (assume the max bitrate) and that changes down to 800,360,180 before the picture and audio become noticeably worse, the assets then go back to 1500 and the quality improves, then drops etc etc It does seem to coincide with peak times, it seems to be staying at 1500 right now, i'll test again later this afternoon and try and get some logs / screenshots :) |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
Frustratingly CH5 don't appear to be sending me to akamai today, which is very strange, i've been hitting https://hwdash.channel5.com/cenc/xxx...PEGDASH_1500_a instead and everything has been fine.
ITV seem to be using https://itvpnpdotcom.cdn1.content.itv.com rather than akamai too |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
problem solved then :tu:
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Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
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Spiderpant - just wondering if virgin have any monitoring on these caches, can they see utilisation on the network links to them / the boxes themselves? I'd imagine they sync their content OOH overnight, but could they somehow end up doing this peak times and causing congestion? Just trying to get an idea of how these things work heh |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
The caches are owned and managed by Akamai themselves. VM can only monitor the link capacity, though we'd contact Akamai if we thought the problem lay at their end.
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Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
Thanks SP
Interestingly, i'm no longer being routed to the VM cache, and everything is fine... C:\Users\xx>tracert akadash0.akamaized.net Tracing route to a1160.w10.akamai.net [88.221.87.131] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.88.1 2 12 ms 14 ms 8 ms 10.53.34.249 3 11 ms 12 ms 10 ms gate-core-2a-xe-501-0.network.virginmedia.net [82.2.240.105] 4 * * * Request timed out. 5 * * * Request timed out. 6 27 ms 24 ms 25 ms 86.85-254-62.static.virginmediabusiness.co.uk [62.254.85.86] 7 * * * Request timed out. 8 23 ms 23 ms 26 ms uk-lon03a-ri1-ae-2-0.aorta.net [84.116.135.46] 9 30 ms 24 ms 24 ms 213.46.174.130 10 24 ms 29 ms 26 ms ae8-xcr1.lnt.cw.net [195.2.24.130] 11 30 ms 29 ms 29 ms ae4-ucr1.mcr.cw.net [195.2.27.166] 12 30 ms 30 ms 30 ms 217.161.88.254 13 29 ms 29 ms 27 ms a88-221-87-131.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [88.221.87.131] Trace complete. Not really sure what is going on here but pinning down is becoming a nightmare, the trend does seem to be the issue only appears when using the VM cache in particular, very strange. |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
Maybe somebody already identified the fault and has taken the problem link out of use.
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Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
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Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
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My house: 350mbit (speed test usually good/low latency/jitter) Shub4 Asus rtac68u Apple TV 4K (not the recent one) hardwired to router Nowtv app Btsport app In-laws: 100mbit (speed test usually good/low latency/jitter) Shub3 Asus rtac68u Samsung 50” connected via 5ghz WiFi - have done Speedtest from tv using fast.com and it can max out the connection. Nowtv app Btsport app Issues started roughly at the same time. I’m area 20, they are burnage/didsbury. |
Re: Virgin Akamai Cache Congestion
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