I recently picked up a Peplink UBR LTE. I’m planning to use it for the first time this weekend to attempt to bond a few weaker connections into one stronger connection for live streaming. I’ve been reading and watching videos all day on how Speedfusion works and am trying to figure out the best settings to use in a live streaming scenario.
My use case:
1.) I’ll be streaming from an ATEM Extreme ISO to Amazon IVS (whitelabel Twitch stream).
2.) I don’t care if there is delay. I imagine I’m going to have delay of up to 1 minute. All I really care about is that the video gets there with enough bandwidth so it doesn’t stutter.
3.) It is possible I will be struggling with each connection to meet the upload requirements for the stream. I would like to stream at 6-8 mbps but I’m in a weird scenario where I might only have 4-5mbps on each connection. But I should have 3 different options. Two cellular and one wifi.
I assume I will want to turn the buffer up on Speedfusion to like 100ms to make sure I don’t drop frames. But if I have like 3 connections how do I get them to play nice and increase the overall speed of the connection? Wan smoothing and other settings seem to increase bandwidth usage to reduce dropped packets in the interest of latency but, I’d love to simply send packets across the different connections to increase the overall speed. Is this possible?
I’ll do what I gotta do, but trying to understand how this all works so I can get the best result out of a tough situation.
@fabier
Dan
I suggest you just set all your active connections to the same priority in the SpeedFusion cloud settings. This will bond them together in the default settings. Do NOT use WAN smoothing as this will duplicate your traffic over multiple connections and effectively reduce your available bandwidth for the live streaming. FEC might help you with packet loss … it does me. You’ll also want to go into support mode (your device’s ip address/cgi-bin/MANGA/support.cgi) and select SpeedFusion Cloud Distribution. This will take you back to your SpeedFusion Cloud page and let you select Dynamic Weighted Bonding which is optimized for cell connections.
I have the Pepwave Max Transit Duo Cat12 with two sims and I also want to optimize for streaming via ATEM mini series video switcher. David, can you explain what the Dynamic Weighted Bonding does? I am eager to get my Pepwave setup so only outbound internet traffic is using speed fusion, as I don’t really care if my downloaded data is bonded, I care much more about making sure the upload/stream data is bonded so it maximizes the possible bandwidth.
Dynamic Weighted Bonding (DWB) is relativley new (I think introduced in 8.1.1). It was created to help in deployments where the default bonding algorithm doesn’t currently do very well; specifically when bonding multiple LTE connections that have significant bufferbloat issues and latency events.
Of course when we’re talking bufferbloat we’re talking about the resultant unwanted latency spikes. If your WAN’s latency increases or spikes while uploading data, the DWB algorithm will monitor it and reduce the percentage of packets going to the high latency link to avoid it from becoming too congested and lowering the overall bandwith on the tunnel.
DWB also identifies bad links faster. This means that when a link’s performance or stability is too poor to be a part of the bonded tunnel (ie when it becomes traffic shaped, or suffers lots of packet loss), no more user traffic will be sent to that WAN-to-WAN link.
This prevents the overall tunnel performance from being affected by a WAN that is not performing well, such as one in a moving vehicle moving away from a tower, or when one is affected by other users cellular traffic in a highly congested area.
@dansherer @MartinLangmaid is much better qualified than me … I’ve had to learn by experiment whereas Martin is a well respected professional. I do agree with everything that he says in his response. I’d also add that my experience of speed fusion bonding is that it protects the upload very well. I regularly stream HD video conferences at 4-5Mbs using 3 bonded LTE connections. Signal strengths are 1 bar on an iphone in the same location.
I don’t know of a way to use speed fusion for upload only.
Hope that helps with more background.
David
Hello @dnavany,
We have broadcasters using the Peplink|Pepwave models here in Australia, New Zealand, and the region. The SpeedFusion technology is essential to the transport streams of 12Mbps and above used regularly for Multicamera HD Broadcasts of live-action footage. Upload is normally more challenging than download at remote sites. The new Dynamic Weighted Bonding (DWB) has been used in this space, and the results speak for themselves.
The locally available connections often constrain the throughput on the router, so we encourage our broadcasters to use a diverse mix of connections. This has been very successful and is used in various situations, including with mixed satellite providers.
If you are only plugging the router directly to the device creating the transport streams, then you need an outbound rule to send all traffic to the SpeedFusion tunnel (as per @MartinLangmaid suggestion).
If you are sharing the router, we recommend creating VLANs and isolating the traffic as per VLAN and differing subnets, then based on the VLAN, create rules based on destination to send traffic over the SpeedFusion tunnel.
One thing to pay attention to is the amount of processing required by the router; the MAX Transit is a terrific router, though you need to watch the CPU loaded for more than two streams at 12Mbps (such as one in and one out), for higher than that we recommend moving to the MBX or SDX or one of the newer series X with the higher processing capacity.
Has your local Peplink Partner been of assistance in offering to configure this for you?
Happy to Help,
Marcus
I appreciate the response. I haven’t connected with the local Peplink Partner yet, but plan to get some assistance directly from them soon. I will keep reading and figuring the best practices on my own until I get that call scheduled. Thanks!
I’m trying to combine my 5G T-Mobile Router (ethernet), Starlink Dish (wifi), Verizon 4G LTE hotspot (sim card) into a single bonded network. Sounds like you were working on a similar goal… live streaming video. How did it end up ?
