Periodic Buffering

Symptoms

• You can stream video through the player.
• Playback is regularly disturbed by period of buffering, where the video stops and the player says "buffering".

Cause

• Buffering issues are usually caused by a lack of sufficient bandwidth for the internet connection. Occasionally buffering is caused because the internet itself is congested (which means the problem should go away by itself), but often it is related to the connection between the computer and the internet (the modem, intranet, T1 line etc).
• Alexander Street Press recommends that each computer accessing the service has at least a high-speed internet connection with minimum 400 kbps connection to the internet.
• If you are within an institution, they may use traffic shapers. These are used on institutional networks to control the bandwidth and can be configured to severely restrict the bandwidth available to each computer, or restrict the bandwidth available for media streams such as music. You should contact your administrator, who will be able to change the settings on the traffic shaper.
• There may be a problem with your connection to the internet. If you are using a dial up or broadband connection you should contact your service provider.

Solution

• Contact your system administrator and ensure that traffic shapers are not restricting the bandwidth available to computers using our music products.
• If you are using a broadband connection you should contact your service provider and get them to ensure that there are no connection errors on your service and you have at least 400 kbps bandwidth connection to the internet.
• You should try accessing the service from another computer to narrow down the cause of the issue.

Resources

• You can test the speed (bandwidth) of your internet connection on the CNET bandwidth test.