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n00b question: How to check if I have good peering with a server provider using looking glass?
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n00b question: How to check if I have good peering with a server provider using looking glass?

I'm looking for a plex server and a lot of VPS/Dedi service providers usually provide a looking glass to check the network connection, how do you basically use those things anyway? How can I check by using a looking glass if they have good peering or connection to me?

I'm pretty n00b, but I know a bit of linux and if you just point me to the right direction I can likely learn my way to it.

Thanks!

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Comments

  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy
    edited November 2019

    Traceroute/mtr will show your packets' travel plans :lol:

  • If you want a purely non-scientific approach, go for the lowest ping.

  • @thedp said:
    Traceroute/mtr will show your packets' travel plans :lol:

    I know about traceroute/mtr, what I want to know is just ping enough?

    @dahartigan said:
    If you want a purely non-scientific approach, go for the lowest ping.

    Will ping be the best metric to say that they have best peering with me?

  • @kennsann said:

    @thedp said:
    Traceroute/mtr will show your packets' travel plans :lol:

    I know about traceroute/mtr, what I want to know is just ping enough?

    @dahartigan said:
    If you want a purely non-scientific approach, go for the lowest ping.

    Will ping be the best metric to say that they have best peering with me?

    Since we're talking about metrics, how would you quantify "best" in terms of the peering? I'd personally say it would be the shortest and fastest path from me to my destination, in which case you can quantify that with a ping result.

  • 1 MTR/Traceroute (Can see number of hops, up streams and packet loss)
    2 Ping (the lower the better, but shouldn't have many up and down)
    3 Download Speed (which actually also translate at end user level with ur current ISP)

    Do that 3 from your target users of plex. Then decide base on all of them. Not all results is 100% accurate as some providers could optimise further for you while some providers could have busy or bottle neck at LG but good in their actual network (rare case).

  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy
    edited November 2019

    Put it this way.

    Ping if you want to know how fast you'll get there, and traceroute/mtr will also tell you that along with the routes you're taking to get there :)

  • If it's for PLEX, IMO throughout is more important than ping. I'd recommend downloading the testfile throughout the day for a week (network congestions can differ depending on time/day of the week, etc.)

    If you have a linux box (e.g. raspberry pi), you could set up a cronjob to download the testfile to /dev/null and save the speed on a logfile

    Thanked by 2dahartigan uptime
  • @dahartigan said:

    @kennsann said:

    @thedp said:
    Traceroute/mtr will show your packets' travel plans :lol:

    I know about traceroute/mtr, what I want to know is just ping enough?

    @dahartigan said:
    If you want a purely non-scientific approach, go for the lowest ping.

    Will ping be the best metric to say that they have best peering with me?

    Since we're talking about metrics, how would you quantify "best" in terms of the peering? I'd personally say it would be the shortest and fastest path from me to my destination, in which case you can quantify that with a ping result.

    Speaking from a plex user streaming from the server, will ping be all everything? Assuming my internet speed locally will be able to match the upload speed of the server.

    @mrclown said:
    1 MTR/Traceroute (Can see number of hops, up streams and packet loss)
    2 Ping (the lower the better, but shouldn't have many up and down)
    3 Download Speed (which actually also translate at end user level with ur current ISP)

    Do that 3 from your target users of plex. Then decide base on all of them. Not all results is 100% accurate as some providers could optimise further for you while some providers could have busy or bottle neck at LG but good in their actual network (rare case).

    Usually download speed from looking glass is limited (I think). I usually just get about 200kb/s max on most of them. Right now, I usually just look at MTR, so I wanted to opinion of more experienced users here to tell me if I am on the right path.

    @thedp said:
    Put it this way.

    Ping if you want to know how fast you'll get there, and traceroute/mtr will also tell you that along with the routes you're taking to get there :)

    I understand ping, just want to know if it would be the best way to access if that provider would be best for me to stream on.

  • @sanvit said:
    If it's for PLEX, IMO throughout is more important than ping. I'd recommend downloading the testfile throughout the day for a week (network congestions can differ depending on time/day of the week, etc.)

    If you have a linux box (e.g. raspberry pi), you could set up a cronjob to download the testfile to /dev/null and save the speed on a logfile

    But I only get about 200kb/s on their looking glass most of the time. I think the LG is rate limited?

    I have a VPS on trial, but before I did a trial I checked the LG and got about the 200kb/s I was talking about, but when I had the actual check downloading from the VPS to my local machine, I got about 10mb/s or close to the promised up speed.

  • kennsann said: Speaking from a plex user streaming from the server, will ping be all everything? Assuming my internet speed locally will be able to match the upload speed of the server.

    Well, let's start by asking what location you are in? Through trial and error, most people here could recommend you a location or provider based on where you are.

    Some locations are expensive, some are insanely cheap.

  • kennsannkennsann Member
    edited November 2019

    @dahartigan said:

    kennsann said: Speaking from a plex user streaming from the server, will ping be all everything? Assuming my internet speed locally will be able to match the upload speed of the server.

    Well, let's start by asking what location you are in? Through trial and error, most people here could recommend you a location or provider based on where you are.

    Some locations are expensive, some are insanely cheap.

    I'm from the Philippines, and I wanted to do the test and learn myself. But hey, if someone can recommend something for me, be my guest.

    Likely the recommendation will be from singapore, japan, and HK, which will be insanely expensive compared to NL. I have pretty bad pings from NL servers and from US servers as well.

    Edit: BTW, I have Digital Ocean VPS in singapore on trial, gives me about 40 ping. Will be paying about $15/month for a 3vCPU 1gb 80gb SSD. Was looking at other providers like Linode and Leaseweb. Whichever has the better CPU and network would win, since I need it for streaming and transcoding.

  • @kennsann said:
    I'm from the Philippines, and I wanted to do the test and learn myself. But hey, if someone can recommend something for me, be my guest.

    Likely the recommendation will be from singapore, japan, and HK, which will be insanely expensive compared to NL. I have pretty bad pings from NL servers and from US servers as well.

    Edit: BTW, I have Digital Ocean VPS in singapore on trial, gives me about 40 ping. Will be paying about $15/month for a 3vCPU 1gb 80gb SSD. Was looking at other providers like Linode and Leaseweb. Whichever has the better CPU and network would win, since I need it for streaming and transcoding.

    There are cheap option, you can get one from LA, AZ, Utah. But people talk about having one in SG for APAC. You need to think about bandwidth as well for SG which doesn't come cheap at all.

    What kind of budget, bandwidth and spec are you aiming at? list down here and some providers can offer you.

  • Less than or equal to $15, it's just for private use for about 3-5 people. Don't really care much about storage. Probably 3TB is right. The best bang for the buck CPU. 1GB ram, but 2GB would be better. I think 1gbit uplink would be essential, but not sure.

    I chose DO for their 3vCPU 1GB, since transcoding needs more CPU and its just $15 per month plus got coupons.

  • @kennsann said:

    @sanvit said:
    If it's for PLEX, IMO throughout is more important than ping. I'd recommend downloading the testfile throughout the day for a week (network congestions can differ depending on time/day of the week, etc.)

    If you have a linux box (e.g. raspberry pi), you could set up a cronjob to download the testfile to /dev/null and save the speed on a logfile

    But I only get about 200kb/s on their looking glass most of the time. I think the LG is rate limited?

    I have a VPS on trial, but before I did a trial I checked the LG and got about the 200kb/s I was talking about, but when I had the actual check downloading from the VPS to my local machine, I got about 10mb/s or close to the promised up speed.

    Is that 10Mb/s (Mbits), or 10MB/s (Mbytes)? IMO you should change to another provider if it's 10Mbps. 10MB/s would be more than enough if you're streaming 1080p.

    @kennsann said:
    Less than or equal to $15, it's just for private use for about 3-5 people. Don't really care much about storage. Probably 3TB is right. The best bang for the buck CPU. 1GB ram, but 2GB would be better. I think 1gbit uplink would be essential, but not sure.

    I chose DO for their 3vCPU 1GB, since transcoding needs more CPU and its just $15 per month plus got coupons.

    Depends on the CPU model and your input/output video format as well. I have a AWS Lightsail instance with 2vCPU (iirc E5-2676 with 1731 passmark per thread), and it maxes out all the cores on a single 1080p stream. It seems like you're going to use Google Drive as your storage medium, and that will also eat up quite some RAM too (rclone mount itself is using around 2GB of RAM for me).

  • sanvitsanvit Member
    edited November 2019

    You could also get the latest @SmartHost deal (aff link) on LA and upgrade the CPU to 8 threads (+$5), and put a CDN (nudge nudge) for throughput/peering ;)

  • @sanvit said:

    @kennsann said:

    @sanvit said:
    If it's for PLEX, IMO throughout is more important than ping. I'd recommend downloading the testfile throughout the day for a week (network congestions can differ depending on time/day of the week, etc.)

    If you have a linux box (e.g. raspberry pi), you could set up a cronjob to download the testfile to /dev/null and save the speed on a logfile

    But I only get about 200kb/s on their looking glass most of the time. I think the LG is rate limited?

    I have a VPS on trial, but before I did a trial I checked the LG and got about the 200kb/s I was talking about, but when I had the actual check downloading from the VPS to my local machine, I got about 10mb/s or close to the promised up speed.

    Is that 10Mb/s (Mbits), or 10MB/s (Mbytes)? IMO you should change to another provider if it's 10Mbps. 10MB/s would be more than enough if you're streaming 1080p.

    @kennsann said:
    Less than or equal to $15, it's just for private use for about 3-5 people. Don't really care much about storage. Probably 3TB is right. The best bang for the buck CPU. 1GB ram, but 2GB would be better. I think 1gbit uplink would be essential, but not sure.

    I chose DO for their 3vCPU 1GB, since transcoding needs more CPU and its just $15 per month plus got coupons.

    Depends on the CPU model and your input/output video format as well. I have a AWS Lightsail instance with 2vCPU (iirc E5-2676 with 1731 passmark per thread), and it maxes out all the cores on a single 1080p stream. It seems like you're going to use Google Drive as your storage medium, and that will also eat up quite some RAM too (rclone mount itself is using around 2GB of RAM for me).

    It's MB/s, sorry. Since Digital Ocean advertises it as 1gbit connection. DO has a 3vCPU with Xeon Gold 6140 based on lscpu, I think has 1736 passmark per thread. Tried doing 3 transcodes from 1080p to 720p, was doing well with CPU.

    I am pulling my media from gdrive, my ram was stable at 900M when playing the 3 streams checking via htop. I had a problem one time when I foolishly ran a geekbench and killed my rclone mount because it ran out of memory. Since I am at a critical level with not much wiggle room with that 1gb, was looking for an alternative with equal CPU power.

    I think you shouldn't be using that much ram tho. It might be because of your mount settings? Not very sure.

  • kennsannkennsann Member
    edited November 2019

    @sanvit said:
    You could also get the latest @SmartHost deal (aff link) on LA and upgrade the CPU to 8 threads (+$5), and put a CDN (nudge nudge) for throughput/peering ;)

    I read about CDN to fix peering issues. But haven't found a good guide on how to do it for plex.

    Edit: what's your experience with smarthost tho?

  • @kennsann said:

    @sanvit said:
    You could also get the latest @SmartHost deal (aff link) on LA and upgrade the CPU to 8 threads (+$5), and put a CDN (nudge nudge) for throughput/peering ;)

    I read about CDN to fix peering issues. But haven't found a good guide on how to do it for plex.

    Edit: what's your experience with smarthost tho?

    iirc I followed some guide that told me copying that guide will help mitigate the gdrive rate limit issues. If you're fine with the 1GB RAM, good for you :)

    For CDN, iirc you should first put a nginx reverse proxy proxying port 80 and 443 to localhost:32400 and put a CDN on front of it. Or, you could just use WARP (or WARP+ for even better network) on the 1.1.1.1 app and don't use the CDN (should do the same thing, assuming you only use mobile devices to stream).

    My smarthost VM is actually idling, so can't give you an exact scope, but support was always fast and every time I ran a benchmark I got stable good result. I did get some slow SSD write speed, but support fixed it very fast.

  • Los Angeles is the best location for you in this case. As @sanvit mentioned, that smarthost deal is what I'm using for Plex at the moment.

    Thanked by 1sanvit
  • @sanvit said:

    @kennsann said:

    @sanvit said:
    You could also get the latest @SmartHost deal (aff link) on LA and upgrade the CPU to 8 threads (+$5), and put a CDN (nudge nudge) for throughput/peering ;)

    I read about CDN to fix peering issues. But haven't found a good guide on how to do it for plex.

    Edit: what's your experience with smarthost tho?

    iirc I followed some guide that told me copying that guide will help mitigate the gdrive rate limit issues. If you're fine with the 1GB RAM, good for you :)

    For CDN, iirc you should first put a nginx reverse proxy proxying port 80 and 443 to localhost:32400 and put a CDN on front of it. Or, you could just use WARP (or WARP+ for even better network) on the 1.1.1.1 app and don't use the CDN (should do the same thing, assuming you only use mobile devices to stream).

    My smarthost VM is actually idling, so can't give you an exact scope, but support was always fast and every time I ran a benchmark I got stable good result. I did get some slow SSD write speed, but support fixed it very fast.

    If you are just pulling media out of the drive and not uploading, you won't hit the upload limit ban. API limit ban tho is a different story.

    Well, I have no idea on how to do the CDN you just told me. LOL. Anyway, since I got key words and a bit of a guide, likely I can find something that will lead the way. Thanks.

    What's up with people here on LET always just idling their servers? Is it really idling? Like it does nothing as in nothing at all? Pretty new to the forum so I am not so sure what people meant.

  • @dahartigan said:
    Los Angeles is the best location for you in this case. As @sanvit mentioned, that smarthost deal is what I'm using for Plex at the moment.

    Did an MTR for the servers available for the deal. Got around 220 ping. Will that be any good for a plex server?

  • kennsannkennsann Member
    edited November 2019

    Btw, what CPU are they using?

  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy

    Yes.

    From Asia, best connectivity/latency to US would be to LA or Seattle.

  • @kennsann said:

    @sanvit said:

    @kennsann said:

    @sanvit said:
    You could also get the latest @SmartHost deal (aff link) on LA and upgrade the CPU to 8 threads (+$5), and put a CDN (nudge nudge) for throughput/peering ;)

    I read about CDN to fix peering issues. But haven't found a good guide on how to do it for plex.

    Edit: what's your experience with smarthost tho?

    iirc I followed some guide that told me copying that guide will help mitigate the gdrive rate limit issues. If you're fine with the 1GB RAM, good for you :)

    For CDN, iirc you should first put a nginx reverse proxy proxying port 80 and 443 to localhost:32400 and put a CDN on front of it. Or, you could just use WARP (or WARP+ for even better network) on the 1.1.1.1 app and don't use the CDN (should do the same thing, assuming you only use mobile devices to stream).

    My smarthost VM is actually idling, so can't give you an exact scope, but support was always fast and every time I ran a benchmark I got stable good result. I did get some slow SSD write speed, but support fixed it very fast.

    If you are just pulling media out of the drive and not uploading, you won't hit the upload limit ban. API limit ban tho is a different story.

    I meant the API limit. Sorry for the confusion!

    Well, I have no idea on how to do the CDN you just told me. LOL. Anyway, since I got key words and a bit of a guide, likely I can find something that will lead the way. Thanks.

    Just googling PLEX CDN should give you some info. But if you're only using mobile, I'll highly recommend using 1.1.1.1 app's WARP (or if you have extra money, WARP+) instead. You just have to install the app, and evrything's done.

    What's up with people here on LET always just idling their servers? Is it really idling? Like it does nothing as in nothing at all? Pretty new to the forum so I am not so sure what people meant.

    That also differs from people to people, but for me, yes. I have quite a lot of VMs for a really good price (some for almost 10+x cheaper than typical DO/Linode), and I just didn't want to let go, so I idle them.

  • sanvitsanvit Member
    edited November 2019

    @kennsann said:

    @dahartigan said:
    Los Angeles is the best location for you in this case. As @sanvit mentioned, that smarthost deal is what I'm using for Plex at the moment.

    Did an MTR for the servers available for the deal. Got around 220 ping. Will that be any good for a plex server?

    Ping actually don't matter much for PLEX. Throughput matters more. That's why I'm recommending you to use WARP+.

    @kennsann said:
    Btw, what CPU are they using?

    sanvit@la-8g:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
    processor       : 0
    vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
    cpu family      : 6
    model           : 45
    model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz
    stepping        : 7
    microcode       : 0x1
    cpu MHz         : 2599.998
    cache size      : 16384 KB
    physical id     : 0
    siblings        : 1
    core id         : 0
    cpu cores       : 1
    apicid          : 0
    initial apicid  : 0
    fpu             : yes
    fpu_exception   : yes
    cpuid level     : 13
    wp              : yes
    flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon rep_good nopl xtopology cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq vmx ssse3 cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx hypervisor lahf_lm pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid tsc_adjust xsaveopt arat
    bugs            : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs
    bogomips        : 5199.99
    clflush size    : 64
    cache_alignment : 64
    address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
    power management:
    

    Other 3 cores should be identical

  • @kennsann said:

    @dahartigan said:
    Los Angeles is the best location for you in this case. As @sanvit mentioned, that smarthost deal is what I'm using for Plex at the moment.

    Did an MTR for the servers available for the deal. Got around 220 ping. Will that be any good for a plex server?

    Yes. Plex isn't a real-time application like VoIP or gaming which would require lower pings. I get 180ms to my Plex server.

  • @dahartigan said:
    If you want a purely non-scientific approach, go for the lowest ping.

    For me, I do ping and speed test.

    I don't care how I get there, as long as I can get there fast and can get data on/off there fast.

  • I wanted to get a better ping since I previously had a seedbox in NL with 20gbit, but since it had bad peering (300ping) to me, usually it takes about a minute or two to load anything and lets not talk about scrubbing. That was a real pain.

    Now, I signed up for a trial with digital ocean, has 40 ping to me. Takes about 20-30secs to play anything then scrubbing is alot less painful.

    Hence I was made it a criteria that I have to have good ping. Altho, I think there is a lot more things at play here, but I am no expert.

  • @kennsann said:
    I wanted to get a better ping since I previously had a seedbox in NL with 20gbit, but since it had bad peering (300ping) to me, usually it takes about a minute or two to load anything and lets not talk about scrubbing. That was a real pain.

    Now, I signed up for a trial with digital ocean, has 40 ping to me. Takes about 20-30secs to play anything then scrubbing is alot less painful.

    Hence I was made it a criteria that I have to have good ping. Altho, I think there is a lot more things at play here, but I am no expert.

    It's most likely that the CPU on your previous seedbox is oversold, and the network throughput between the seedbox and your home internet was bad. You won't see much difference for 100-200ms added buffer time.

  • @sanvit said:

    @kennsann said:
    I wanted to get a better ping since I previously had a seedbox in NL with 20gbit, but since it had bad peering (300ping) to me, usually it takes about a minute or two to load anything and lets not talk about scrubbing. That was a real pain.

    Now, I signed up for a trial with digital ocean, has 40 ping to me. Takes about 20-30secs to play anything then scrubbing is alot less painful.

    Hence I was made it a criteria that I have to have good ping. Altho, I think there is a lot more things at play here, but I am no expert.

    It's most likely that the CPU on your previous seedbox is oversold, and the network throughput between the seedbox and your home internet was bad. You won't see much difference for 100-200ms added buffer time.

    Since you mention throughput, how do we measure that from a connection from server to local machine? Will a speedtest-cli using servers near me do the trick?

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