Check This Out PSA: For those having network/ping issues when Netflix is in-use

[FireHazard772]

Note: This is mainly for those that experience network issues, or ping spikes, when one or more people on the same network are running Netflix

Something which I was recently having issues with for a couple months, even with a QoS (Quality of Service) setting enabled on my router, but found a solution for:


Go to your Netflix account settings via either of the following:

- Open the Netflix website on your browser, log in, and look for the account settings

- On the Netflix App, click/tap the button with the 3 bars (should be at the top left corner), scroll down and click 'Account' (doing this should open the Netflix website on your browser)

Once there, scroll down and look for 'Playback settings' underneath the 'My Profile' section

This should bring up a list of 4 data-usage/video quality options - Auto, Low, Medium, High. If you have it set to Auto or High, drop it to Medium.

Likewise - If it's set to Medium, drop it to Low (although this wasn't the case for me, so I don't know how much it will affect the video quality)


You can test the video quality after doing this if you desire, although both myself and those that I live with that also watch Netflix haven't noticed any difference in it when I switched it from 'Auto' to 'Medium'.

 

[GoT HiTReG?]

Youtube will auto to the highest as well (for fullscreen anyways), so manually setting your quality there might also help.

I think I should probably note here that QoS on consumer devices isn't likely to fix latency issues from downloading stuff. Generally they will only do fq_codel for your upload since that is where you are likely to get buffer problems (either taildrop on your modem due to lack of upstream channel bandwidth/"airtime" (cable channels are shared medium, I have no knowledge of more than 1 spacial stream), or running into deep ISP buffers (bufferbloat) used to squeeze every bit of speed); tuning these for applications is iffy at best.

Most consumer devices probably aren't going to be a download bottleneck unless you get upwards of 100+Mbps from your ISP and have enabled NAT + other features; in which case you can only police traffic to prevent overrunning your device (not a feature on consumer stuff) and doesn't solve the per application issue. Generally it will be at over provisioned nodes on the ISP end, which no QoS will fix (only praying they groom the nodes).

Netflix shouldn't be using more than 8Mbps at most even at 1080p 60fps. Now if every family member was watching Full HD 60fps videos... That might do it, and even have yourself throttled by the ISP if you are 95th percentile during peak.

 

[FireHazard772]

Netflix shouldn't be using more than 8Mbps at most even at 1080p 60fps. Now if every family member was watching Full HD 60fps videos... That might do it, and even have yourself throttled by the ISP if you are 95th percentile during peak.

The speed I have, unfortunately, is 15Mbps Down / Less-than-1Mbps Up, and the issue I had was when 2 people were on Netflix at the same time both of them combined usually used pretty much all of the download speed (with maybe 1-3Mbps not used), and occasionally used a tiny, but noticeable due to the speed I have, amount of Upload.

I tried seeing if my ISP was throttling our network several times, but long-story-short it was a useless effort, even though there were a couple times it was quite clear they were, even when no-one was on Netflix.

But anywho, for the moment it isn't an issue anymore, so figured I'd make this thread to help out others that may be having similar issues.