ATV 4 Ethernet performance poor

[Soondae]

Trying to watch world series game 1 live via MLB on my ATV4 and the buffering was terrible while my ATV4 was connected via the 10/100 ethernet port. Finally got fed up and disconnected the Cat5 cable and connected to my Apple Time Capsule on the 5 Ghz signal 11AC and WOW what a difference in performance.

When the specifications for the ATV4 were first released I questioned why on earth would Apple not support Gigabyte ethernet on this device? I believe I saw others comment before they saw better wireless performance using WiFi vs the ethernet port. It just doesn't make any sense to me, ethernet should be better.

Is it possible this latest TVOS 10.1 update broke the ethernet connectivity?

 

[priitv8]

Is it possible this latest TVOS 10.1 update broke the ethernet connectivity?

I have no such experience. I never had my aTV on wireless, always wired, and the performance has not suffered from the OS upgrades so far.

 

[2010mini]

I have no such experience. I never had my aTV on wireless, always wired, and the performance has not suffered from the OS upgrades so far.
View attachment 668000

How is your uploads faster than your downloads?

 

[priitv8]

How is your uploads faster than your downloads?

That's because IPTV is eating out some bandwidth. My set-top-box is always on.

 

[sigftw]

something is definitely up. I'm getting connection problems via ethernet since the update. just switched to WiFi and much more stable

 

[mlody]

Same here. I have 75mbps Comcast service and was always getting nice and steady 90 Mbps down and 12 Mbps up and now I can't even get 30 Mbps down. Upload does not seem to be impacted. When I switch back to wifi, I am right up to 90 Mbps.

the latest update definitely f... ed up the ethernet connectivity, at least for me.

 

[HDFan]

I was running 10.0 and speedtest on ATV4 showed my Comcast wired connection running at 94 Mbps/24 Mbps. This was slower than the speeds that I saw on my wireless iPad and wired Mac (175 Mbps and 183 Mbps respectively for downloads, 24 Mbps for uploads).

After the update to 10.0.1 update numbers were identical (94/24). I then unplugged the ethernet cable and connected via wireless. My network speed on the ATV4 increased to 179/14. Reconnecting via wired showed the same slower speed.

So I did see slower speeds via wired. However I have no other device at the end of that switch to verify that this issue is with the Apple TV. It may be that that's all the bandwidth that is available at the switch end.

 

[satcomer]

I was running 10.0 and speedtest on ATV4 showed my Comcast wired connection running at 94 Mbps/24 Mbps. This was slower than the speeds that I saw on my wireless iPad and wired Mac (175 Mbps and 183 Mbps respectively for downloads, 24 Mbps for uploads).

After the update to 10.0.1 update numbers were identical (94/24). I then unplugged the ethernet cable and connected via wireless. My network speed on the ATV4 increased to 179/14. Reconnecting via wired showed the same slower speed.

So I did see slower speeds via wired. However I have no other device at the end of that switch to verify that this issue is with the Apple TV. It may be that that's all the bandwidth that is available at the switch end.

You have very old Ethernet cables (check to make sure they are at least CAT6) as well as your switch (how old is your router/switch?).

 

[majorge]

You have very old Ethernet cables (check to make sure they are at least CAT6) as well as your switch (how old is your router/switch?).

The Apple TV's Ethernet port is only 10/100 (http://www.apple.com/apple-tv/specs/) so it's never going to test faster than 100 Mbps, regardless of cable, switch, router or ISP: the device is incapable of sending or receiving faster than 100 Mbps.

 

[priitv8]

The Apple TV's Ethernet port is only 10/100 (http://www.apple.com/apple-tv/specs/) so it's never going to test faster than 100 Mbps, regardless of cable, switch, router or ISP: the device is incapable of sending or receiving faster than 100 Mbps.

Which should be plenty. I wonder if anyone on this forum has tested max bitrate aTV 4 is still able to decode and play back?
Apple specs suggest that it is not guaranteed to exceed 60Mbps (High Profile 4.2).

 

[HDFan]

That would be an interesting test. But since 4K isn't supported, then I guess you are limited to Blu-Ray. I went into Final Cut Pro X and the highest bitrate I could generate for H264 was 30 Mbps. Tried Premiere Pro but the only level they had for H264 was High Profile 4.1 which also was limited to 30 Mbps. But I'm not an expert in either one of the programs or in codecs. Maybe someone knows how to generate a 60 Mbps test file that the apple tv can try to decode.

majorge - it is indeed an old switch. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep that in mind when I move to 4K. Since I my max is Blu-Ray rates now I've got a lot of headroom so I'll wait on upgrading the network.