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Poor streaming on iPhone 6+ even with fast wifi

M

Mike Boreham

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 10, 2006
4,090
2,100
UK
I am not happy with the streaming on my iPhone 6+. It behaves as though the internet connection is not fast enough, pixelation, pauses etc.

Watching the GP streamed from BBC on Sunday, it was hopeless, so I switched to my 13inch rMBP and it was instantly perfect in the same location on same network. I have an iPad Air which streams much better.

Does the 1920x1080 iPhone 6 place very heavy demands on streaming bandwidth, or are there any settings I can change?
 
Are you using 802.11ac wifi? My 6+ is blazing fast on the 5GHz "ac" network I setup for it.

Try doing a reset of the network settings on the iPhone and re-connect to your network from scratch and see if that solves it. Try some speedtests as well to verify what your DL/UL speeds are on your 6+ in relation to your 13rMBP...it should be close.
 
cababah said:
Are you using 802.11ac wifi? My 6+ is blazing fast on the 5GHz "ac" network I setup for it.

Try doing a reset of the network settings on the iPhone and re-connect to your network from scratch and see if that solves it. Try some speedtests as well to verify what your DL/UL speeds are on your 6+ in relation to your 13rMBP...it should be close.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

My iPhone 6+ is fine streaming from my 802.11 ac network at 123 Mbps, but my point is that it is not fine streaming elsewhere, at say 15 Mbps, where the iPad Air and rMBP are happy. Which is why I said it behaves as if it needs much more bandwidth.

Shouldn't 15 Mbps be enough for smooth streaming?

I will try resetting network as you suggest.

EDIT, just made interesting discovery that it streams much better from the 3G network at 5.6 Mbps than it does from 802.11 n wifi at at 18 Mbps.

Any thoughts
 
I have now reset Network Settings with no effect.

So situation is:

Wifi 802.11 ac.... 120 Mbps.......good
Wifi 802.11 n....... 18 Mbps ......poor (same network same location is 50 Mbps on rMBP)
3G network.............5 Mbps......good

Repeated the above a few times.

The 802.11 n starts ok then after a couple a minutes pixelates badly, pauses, resumes pixelated.

Makes no sense to me!
 
Both my 5 and 5S frequently streamed YouTube better on cellular than my home wifi network. I've only seen it once on my 6+ so far and I currently have 802.11ac and on the 5Ghz network. Now that I think about it I wonder if it's because I have cellular data turned off to almost all my apps.

Sorry I don't have a better answer than "you're not alone". :)
 
in the USA at least for youtube, don't plan on streaming 1080p unless your ISP is youtube HD certified
 
PNutts said:
Both my 5 and 5S frequently streamed YouTube better on cellular than my home wifi network. I've only seen it once on my 6+ so far and I currently have 802.11ac and on the 5Ghz network. Now that I think about it I wonder if it's because I have cellular data turned off to almost all my apps.

Sorry I don't have a better answer than "you're not alone". :)
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
Have you tried switching your DNS servers to the Google recommended for streaming media?

Primary: 8.8.8.8
Secondary: 8.8.4.4

You could see this resolve your streaming woes.
 
mpayne2k said:
Have you tried switching your DNS servers to the Google recommended for streaming media?

Primary: 8.8.8.8
Secondary: 8.8.4.4

You could see this resolve your streaming woes.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I am in UK and I am seeing the poor 802.11n streaming with BBC, Sky Go, and Amazon Instant video.

Would these be affected by the Google DNS servers you suggest?

Would wrong DNS servers explain why it is good with 3G and 802.11 ac, but not 802.11n?
 
mpayne2k said:
Have you tried switching your DNS servers to the Google recommended for streaming media?

Primary: 8.8.8.8
Secondary: 8.8.4.4

You could see this resolve your streaming woes.
Click to expand...

Just Googled to find out more about this and found Namebench, which says my best primary DNS is 8.8.8.8 and secondary is 10.0.1.1 (which is my current)

Changed to 8.8.8.8 on iPhone and it is better, but not as good as the other two...at least as far as I could check before battery died.

Thanks very much for the suggestion...definitely progress.
 
Mike Boreham said:
Thanks.

My iPhone 6+ is fine streaming from my 802.11 ac network at 123 Mbps, but my point is that it is not fine streaming elsewhere, at say 15 Mbps, where the iPad Air and rMBP are happy. Which is why I said it behaves as if it needs much more bandwidth.

Shouldn't 15 Mbps be enough for smooth streaming?

I will try resetting network as you suggest.

EDIT, just made interesting discovery that it streams much better from the 3G network at 5.6 Mbps than it does from 802.11 n wifi at at 18 Mbps.

Any thoughts
Click to expand...
i think you need 25+ for smooth streaming
 
Mike Boreham said:
8.1.1

----------



How does that play with better streaming form 5 Mbps on my 3G connection?

I have an app called OpenSignal which includes a SpeedTest like test, and shows a star rating for browsing, video and VoIP. My 802.11n gets 5/5 stars for video.
Click to expand...

This may be why. I suffered same issue with poor performance over wifi and this fixed it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/2nbvoy/wifried_ios_8_wifi_issue_fix_and_details_for/
 
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