Having run  MSFS quite satisfactorily for months and months I now get a message re insufficient bandwidth and I have been switched to Offline.

Any suggestions as to who I should give a "rocket" to? Is it at MSFS end or would it be our own(Australian) below standard internet set up.

I may not be able to do much about it but I get really cheesed off when all these smarmy smart alec organisations tell us that the internet is the way of the future (as it may well be) but they fail to deliver a consistant and reliable product.

Grrr.

 Sorry.. rant over...  A cup of tea and a lie down perhaps.

Dan

 

Cuppa Tea, a Bex, and a good lie down 😀

26 minutes ago, danielwilliam said:

 

Any suggestions as to who I should give a "rocket" to? Is it at MSFS end or would it be our own(Australian) below standard internet set up.

 

 

Pretty sure it's Microsofts servers that are the issue.   My internet is a rock solid 220Mb cable connection.  In the last few days i've had several instances of being switched to offline mode despite my connection being completely fine.

Microsofts servers really aren't up to the job.  They seriously need to up their game.

For me, it works just fine when I use Ethernet on my PC. No interruptions at all then.

But when I switch to WiFi, it mostly does not work, because the WiFi signal is too weak at my PC's location. I could optimize the WiFi for sure, but so far was too lazy for that and just use the Ethernet cable for MSFS.

What level of bandwidth do MS regard as insufficient? My broadband is supposed to be 45 mbs with a speed guarantee of 35 mbs and I still get these warnings from time to time.

When I get them, my speed is in the 35 to 45 range, so I've just assumed that it's MS not supplying its customers for the service they have paid for again.

1 hour ago, cianpars said:

What level of bandwidth do MS regard as insufficient? My broadband is supposed to be 45 mbs with a speed guarantee of 35 mbs and I still get these warnings from time to time.

 

I'm going to monitor how much bandwidth it's using later and will let you know, but i doubt its anything like 35mb.  I'm absolutely convinced the problem is on Microsofts end.   

As previously mentioned i have 220Mb and sometimes use geforce now for a couple of games. That can be using 45Mb constantly and i can be connected for up to 6 hours at a time without a hitch, with 1440p Youtube vids going at the same time and several websites open, so know my connection is solid.

From Feb up until last week I'd only been booted into offline mode once in MSFS.  In the last 4 days I've had it 4 times. My internet connection hasn't dropped in months.

(Always connected by Ethernet.)

I've had the issue a couple of times, too, and both times it resolved itself, so presume it was a temporary server-side issue.

Crazydog had the same issue more persistently, however, and discovered the issue was seemingly connected to a mod he was running that replaces Bing world data with Google's. If anyone has this issue persistently and has such a mod running, it would be worth removing the mod to see what happens.

1 hour ago, The Moose said:

I'm absolutely convinced the problem is on Microsofts end.   

Of course it is

Ok, did some quick unscientific bandwidth testing.

Bandwidth set to unlimited in MSFS.  Test area was Madrid.  Live traffic/Live weather/PG on. No manual or rolling cache. Nearly everything maxed settings,  200/200 lod's.

Flew out of LEMD in the H145 doing large circles around the city and back to the airport 3 times, staying approx. 800ft AGL as i wanted the highest detail level possible for maximum bandwidth use.

First outbound to the city which is PG it was doing bursts up to 45Mbps, but probably averaging 20Mbps. This dropped to anywhere between 5 and 10Mbps as i exited the PG area.  As i turned back towards the airport (where a lot of live traffic had now loaded in on the apron) and i was over a new PG area i saw a couple of bursts exceeding 100Mbps but generally in the 20-40Mbps range.

As i circled back to repeat the route for the second time all the above figures were vastly reduced, the highest time again was flying back towards the airport where it peaked around 50Mbps

Third circle BW usage was vastly reduced, only using between 1 and 10Mbps outbound with it again peaking as i flew back towards the airport at approx. 30Mbps for a short while.

Make of that what you will...

1 minute ago, The Moose said:

Ok, did some quick unscientific bandwidth testing.

Did you use the Task Manager to monitor the bandwidth, or a different app?.

1 minute ago, edpatino said:

Did you use the Task Manager to monitor the bandwidth, or a different app?.

Just monitored network activity in resource manager with nothing but MSFS running.  As i said,  unscientific 😉  Just wanted to get a quick overview and some approx. numbers.

5 hours ago, danielwilliam said:

Having run  MSFS quite satisfactorily for months and months I now get a message re insufficient bandwidth and I have been switched to Offline.

Any suggestions as to who I should give a "rocket" to? Is it at MSFS end or would it be our own(Australian) below standard internet set up.

I may not be able to do much about it but I get really cheesed off when all these smarmy smart alec organisations tell us that the internet is the way of the future (as it may well be) but they fail to deliver a consistant and reliable product.

Grrr.

 Sorry.. rant over...  A cup of tea and a lie down perhaps.

Dan

 

I concur this has been a problem for me since SU5 was released last July.  With a solid Ethernet connection I see this problem all the time along with ATC voices switching to generic monotone voicing from time to time.

I have a wired ethernet connection via a very good router (optimized for multiple streams), and a 200MB  internet connection via Spectrum Cable here in the northeastern US. 

I own my own router and cable modem. I do not use equipment supplied by my ISP, as those tend to be of relatively low quality.

Other than those times when Azure is completely down for everyone, I typically have good connectivity to the MSFS servers. I don’t think I have ever seen a “low bandwidth” warning. I do occasionally get a warning “your internet connection has been lost”, but it usually reports that the connection has been restored a few moments later.

I normally connect to the US East server. One important thing to understand about MSFS is that it does not connect to “a” server. The game makes multiple TCP/IP connections to multiple networks when running, and those servers are not necessarily all in the same geographic area. 

Streaming scenery comes from one server. Live Weather comes from a different server. Live Traffic, Multiplayer, and Azure voice each come from separate discrete servers. I have verified this by enabling and disabling various options (like Live Traffic) and watching which new connections are established, and which drop. For me, one of the servers that typically has more data throughput than any other is not even Azure - it is hosted on Amazon AWS.

That is why some parts of MSFS (like Azure voice) might stop working while other parts (like scenery streaming) continue.

Of course, with any TCP/IP connection, there could be any number of intermediate routers between your computer and the server at the other end, and your total bandwidth will be no better than that the weakest link in the chain.

Edited November 1, 20214 yr by JRBarrett