Ignite TV - Wired Connection

[gumshoe99]

I really have 2 points / questions:

1) I turned in my rental Rocket modem and pvr and am now on ignite 150u and IgniteTV both accessed through the Gateway (modem/router). I'm going to add the free VoIP phone with a new number also in a day or so connected directly to tel 1 on the Gateway as soon as I have time to call Rogers.

In the past I've always had at least my main PC wired via Ethernet but I'm wondering since everything goes through the same Gateway and control access is through a phone app is there any speed advantage or any other reason to remain wired. I'm so glad to finally get rid of all those open cable runs and splitters any other wire removal is a bonus.

2) I'm into early trials and experimentation and right now I'm running my main PC wired and I've seen a ever so slight picture glitch and hesitation while watching a couple of tv shows using "https://ignitetv.rogers.com".  I don't know if the fault is with the browser, the Flash (dodo bird) player or transmission congestion but I've never seen this type of issue using the old modem limited by my bundle to half the current rated speed but dedicated to internet traffic since the TV signal was processed on cable.. It might take a while testing at my end to be sure but do you think the 150Mbps can handle the traffic of multiple terminals plus internet or would the 500Mbps be a better option? I don't want to spend the extra $$$ a month for nothing but then I also want smooth video.

For the purposes of this question assume 3 simultaneous TV shows active via the xi6-T terminals possibly 1 or 2 more being recorded to the cloud and 1 PC accessing the internet (wired or not) plus one tablet using wifi watching a video on a site using a browser or possibly conducting a Zoom session also at the same time. With no visible off light on the stb it makes me wonder if the boxes that are unused in the family room, living room, etc.. are really off when the tv is shut off. Are they still consuming bandwidth? With unlimited it may not matter at the consumer's end for cost but what about congestion.

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[Bplayer]

From my experience:

#1. A wired connection will always be faster, providing the maximum speed and smallest ping. This is helpful if you are sending/receiving a large amount of data. But for general usage you should not notice the difference going from wired to wireless even if the device is not located in an idea wifi location.

#2. Does this glitch happen with live or recorded TV? This is more likely to happen with live because it cannot buffer the stream to the same extent as playback of a recorded program. Your 150Mbps connection is unlikely to be a problem and even having three active concurrent streams should be handled quite easily. Look back in this forum for a posting on speed issues for tests that you can run, for an hour or two, to measure the quality of your connection as this could be the issue.

[-G-]

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@gumshoe99 wrote:

I really have 2 points / questions:

1) I turned in my rental Rocket modem and pvr and am now on ignite 150u and IgniteTV both accessed through the Gateway (modem/router). I'm going to add the free VoIP phone with a new number also in a day or so connected directly to tel 1 on the Gateway as soon as I have time to call Rogers.

In the past I've always had at least my main PC wired via Ethernet but I'm wondering since everything goes through the same Gateway and control access is through a phone app is there any speed advantage or any other reason to remain wired. I'm so glad to finally get rid of all those open cable runs and splitters any other wire removal is a bonus.

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Hi.  I also have a 150u Internet service and 3 Ignite set-top boxes.  Most of the devices in my home office are connected via (wired) Ethernet.  I only use WiFi for my set-top boxes and mobile devices.  That works well for me with the traffic patterns on my network.

2) I'm into early trials and experimentation and right now I'm running my main PC wired and I've seen a ever so slight picture glitch and hesitation while watching a couple of tv shows using "https://ignitetv.rogers.com".  I don't know if the fault is with the browser, the Flash (dodo bird) player or transmission congestion but I've never seen this type of issue using the old modem limited by my bundle to half the current rated speed but dedicated to internet traffic since the TV signal was processed on cable.. It might take a while testing at my end to be sure but do you think the 150Mbps can handle the traffic of multiple terminals plus internet or would the 500Mbps be a better option? I don't want to spend the extra $$$ a month for nothing but then I also want smooth video.

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Ignite TV is sent as a buffered adaptive bitrate stream and its traffic is transmitted over a unicast connection in bursts.  An HD channel consumes roughly 10 Mb/s of bandwidth, which is not that much.  The video will quality on your PC (or any device) will depend not only on whether you have enough bandwidth available for the video stream but also on whether there is adequate processing power on the receiving device to decode and render the stream.

For the purposes of this question assume 3 simultaneous TV shows active via the xi6-T terminals possibly 1 or 2 more being recorded to the cloud and 1 PC accessing the internet (wired or not) plus one tablet using wifi watching a video on a site using a browser or possibly conducting a Zoom session also at the same time. With no visible off light on the stb it makes me wonder if the boxes that are unused in the family room, living room, etc.. are really off when the tv is shut off. Are they still consuming bandwidth? With unlimited it may not matter at the consumer's end for cost but what about congestion.

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If you only press the "Power" button on the Rogers remote, it used to be that the Ignite set-top boxes remained on and streaming even when you turned off your TV.  If your TVs have HDMI Device Control (HDMI-CEC) enabled, the set-top boxes should now shut off when you turn your TV off.  When the Ignite set-top box is in standby mode, its white status LED will turn off.

As for whether you should upgrade your Internet connection, keep in mind that an Ignite TV HD stream will consume roughly 10 Mb/s and a 4K stream will consume roughly 25 Mb/s.  You will need to calculate how much additional bandwidth you will need for other traffic.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you have A LOT of WiFi traffic, it is REALLY important that your WiFi network is working as efficiently as possible and that ALL devices, that are actively sending and receiving traffic, have good quality WiFi connections and, if possible, that you are not using the same WiFi channels as your neighbours.  (For a good quality WiFi connection, it's not good enough that the WiFi client gets a strong signal from the WiFi Access Point; the AP needs to see a strong signal from the device as well.  Only one device can transmit on a channel at a time so if any one device has a poor quality connection, that device will tend to hog air time and WiFi quality for other devices will suffer.  If you and your neighbour(s) are using the same WiFi channel, then you are all sharing and contending for the same air space.)

[gumshoe99]

Thanks for the responses. As the crow flies, my computer is 3 feet away from the Gateway as it was with the Rocket modem. I've never done anything fancy with the settings using mostly defaults changing only the router password, the wifi SSID and password and playing a bit with mac filtering. . I too always felt that the more stable signal should be wired with less chance of outside interference creeping in. I also kept a couple of PC's wired because it felt more secure to set the device so it could only be updated manually. The old routers could be accessed via the browser through 192.168.., a device admin name and default passwords that could be changed. I've only been at this Gateway and IgniteTV a few days but most of my time has been disconnecting cables and splitters and setting up the various new devices. I saw a SSID and password on the bottom of the Gateway but have yet to find out if there is a default admin name and password to access the Gateway using a browser on a wired connection.

The glitches occurred when I was watching live TV shows using Firefox. Before I posted the question I quickly tried other browsers (Opera, Brave, Chrome maybe Edge the brain is fried right now) but at least one does not support Flash at all and I believe when I activated the browser plugin in Opera it stated that they will discontinue support in Dec 2020. I tried the speed test and it shows mostly over 300Mbps down and ballpark 16.3 up no matter which server I tested with. This was after 1:00 a.m. and again at 10:00 a.m. today. The glitches and hesitations I saw were roughly in the 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. range last night. Mind you it was maybe twice per half hour show. In one case a brief 1 or 2 second but clear obvious partial image shift to the left ghosting and breakup and in other cases mostly a quick pause and a skipped word or 2. (btw it wasn't a censoring word blank. Just regular afternoon and evening stuff. One of the shows was The Big Bang Theory).

I'm trying to spitball ideas to eliminate anything from my end that might be causing this issue.I know I'll have to test this further using the other working browsers and check to see how and where the default player stores its buffered data. I have multiple hdd connected on my PC but my C drive is a ssd. I have to consider other background activities waking up on my PC and causing the issue such as virus checkers etc... My main browsing PC specs are trailing edge (I5-3570, 16gb ram, onboard video using display port) but there appears to be no problems playing local h.264 encoded video or online Netflix, Disney+ and many other free(ish) video sites which on quick view looked fine using the same browser. That might need revisiting since I tried those in the quiet hours of the overnight which removes much of neighborhood traffic. When push comes to shove if area traffic is deemed an issue, I'm willing to upgrade my bundle to 500u if it elevates me over possible neighborhood congestion but I'd like to eliminate other possibilities first.

Very much appreciate the info. I have yet to change any settings in the Gateway so have no idea how it is configured. I have difficulty reading fine print using the android app on a 6" cell phone. I was hoping the install could have been done on PC or at worse with my 11.6" win10 tablet but it appears it's Android or Apple or no go. I wasn't aware of that limitation when I switched. It would have been a nice-to-know bit of a warning from the selling agent. Now that the Gateway is activated I'm hoping there is basic wired access like there was with every other router I've ever owned so I can check and change some settings using my browser and 55" tv which is used as my main monitor. I'd hate to unknowingly be broadcasting a default Gateway router access password without changing it. If someone knows how to do that using the defaults please post it.