Low bandwidth - is it me somehow

[markgrinyer 6]

Hi

 

Ever since SU12 I regularly get kicked into offline mode with due to low bandwidth. But every time I do a download speed test I get 120mbps

Is it a known issue or anything I can do about it. I'm in the UK if that makes any difference 

[cianpars 1,163]

It seems that ms servers slow down a lot at busy times.  A lot of us have been complaining about it for a long time.

Not sure if it makes any difference, but it seems to happen to me a lot more often when I use high LODs (or that may just be a coincidence).  Anyone have any views on that?

[markgrinyer 6]

My lod is already quite low for what it used to be at 100. Only seems to have been since SU12. Used to happen some time ago but a sim update had fixed it

[altenae 171]

1 hour ago, markgrinyer said:

Hi

 

Ever since SU12 I regularly get kicked into offline mode with due to low bandwidth. But every time I do a download speed test I get 120mbps

Is it a known issue or anything I can do about it. I'm in the UK if that makes any difference 

Do people ever use the search option ?
Also check here :

As noted by the devs, this issue is currently with a CDN.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/your-bandwidth-is-too-low-february-march-april-2023/573113/1487

 

and

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by altenae

[David Mills 4,726]

 

A fix is coming with AAU_02.

 

[altenae 171]

20 minutes ago, David Mills said:

 

A fix is coming with AAU_02.

 

Uhh no.its a CDN issue. 

This is a little misleading 

[petz_e 75]

31 minutes ago, altenae said:

Uhh no.its a CDN issue. 

This is a little misleading 

Exactly. There are in fact three issues discussed on the official forums.

The first is that the message is right in your face and pausing the sim which is very disturbing. The devs said that they are going to change that with a more graceful way of notifying the user that the sim has gone to offline mode. That’s what’s probably planned for the AAU2 in june/july.

Then, there are quite a lot of users that are reporting infinite freezes and CTD when re-enabling online mode after the sim has gone offline. Hopefully this will also get resolved in AAU2.

The actual root of the problem, these frequent disconnects, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, are, according to Asobo, related to a CDN in the Internet. This cannot be fixed by an update. They have to locate the right node and see with whoever operates this CDN why there is a bottleneck and what can be done about that, if anything. I highly doubt that the ‘effective AAu2’ tag in the feedback snapshot is related to this particular issue.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

1 hour ago, petz_e said:

Exactly. There are in fact three issues discussed on the official forums.

The first is that the message is right in your face and pausing the sim which is very disturbing. The devs said that they are going to change that with a more graceful way of notifying the user that the sim has gone to offline mode. That’s what’s probably planned for the AAU2 in june/july.

Then, there are quite a lot of users that are reporting infinite freezes and CTD when re-enabling online mode after the sim has gone offline. Hopefully this will also get resolved in AAU2.

The actual root of the problem, these frequent disconnects, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, are, according to Asobo, related to a CDN in the Internet. This cannot be fixed by an update. They have to locate the right node and see with whoever operates this CDN why there is a bottleneck and what can be done about that, if anything. I highly doubt that the ‘effective AAu2’ tag in the feedback snapshot is related to this particular issue.

Microsoft CDN = Azure

[David Mills 4,726]

I saw someone mention a couple of weeks ago that he used a VPN -- which seemed to prevent these low-bandwidth messages and disconnects. Does that potential solution make sense to anyone here? Has anyone tried that avenue? I'm getting bandwidth messages essentially every time I fly now, even though my bandwidth is good and reliable. I live in the Eastern USA.

Edited April 13, 2023 by David Mills

[JRBarrett 3,034]

2 hours ago, David Mills said:

I saw someone mention a couple of weeks ago that he used a VPN -- which seemed to prevent these low-bandwidth messages and disconnects. Does that potential solution make sense to anyone here? Has anyone tried that avenue? I'm getting bandwidth messages essentially every time I fly now, even though my bandwidth is good and reliable. I live in the Eastern USA.

I have never had the “low bandwidth” message, though I occasionally get temporarily disconnected. I am in the US northeast

The problem seems to be ever-present in parts of Europe - particularly in the Netherlands and Germany. Users in this area seem to be able to get around it by VPNing to the US, which will cause MSFS to use a US-based server for streaming scenery instead of the default European server(s) that seem to have the ongoing problem.

[cianpars 1,163]

9 hours ago, David Mills said:

I saw someone mention a couple of weeks ago that he used a VPN -- which seemed to prevent these low-bandwidth messages and disconnects. Does that potential solution make sense to anyone here? Has anyone tried that avenue? I'm getting bandwidth messages essentially every time I fly now, even though my bandwidth is good and reliable. I live in the Eastern USA.

Makes no sense to me David, though I also remember reading this too.  I have 150 mb full fibre and my VPN usually supplies a bandwidth of around 100 mbs depending on which server I'm using, time of day, etc.

[Biggles2010 342]

19 hours ago, markgrinyer said:

Ever since SU12 I regularly get kicked into offline mode with due to low bandwidth. But every time I do a download speed test I get 120mbps

Is it a known issue or anything I can do about it. I'm in the UK if that makes any difference 

It's unlikely that SU12 itself is the cause. Probably just that it coincided with acknowledged server problems. Still unsatisfactory, and probably made worse in the UK by most ISPs using the BT network, parts of which are still antiquated, so it struggles to cope with increasing demand.             

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that because of the structural limitations, real life services are being throttled, in a way that excludes the main speedtest sites, which the ISPs use as proof of service speeds.  Where I live, the best available speed at the moment is 68 to 70 Mbs. The Speedtest.net  and BT Wholsale speed tests always show the full rated speed, at any time of day, but I have never seen better than 20% of this from any other server, at any time.  Of course, my ISP denies throttling goes on, while the regulators close their eyes to such issues, because it would be embarrassing to admit our telecoms systems are inadequate.

[RJC68 823]

13 hours ago, David Mills said:

I saw someone mention a couple of weeks ago that he used a VPN -- which seemed to prevent these low-bandwidth messages and disconnects. Does that potential solution make sense to anyone here? Has anyone tried that avenue? I'm getting bandwidth messages essentially every time I fly now, even though my bandwidth is good and reliable. I live in the Eastern USA.

I wonder if it could somehow be your ISP throttling your bandwith David,

I am not a million miles away from your region and only get disconnected once in a blue moon, more so just after a sim update. I have flown a lot over the last week with no disconnections. In Jan I switched from a good old regular cable provided internet service to brand new fibre service at 1.5Gbps down / 940Mbps up, I was curious if the extra bandwidth would make any difference compared to my old 300Mbps service but I cannot say if the scenery loads any quicker. My old service was more than adequate for MSFS it was just unreliable. I did notice that after SU12 everything looks a little sharper from the air now, not sure if they tweaked the LOD's behind the scene

Edited April 14, 2023 by RJC68

[orchestra_nl 923]

I used a VPN to circumvent the low bandwidth issue and it worked fine for a while but another issue has cropped up so I stopped using that as a workaround.

The other issue is MSFS failing to get passed the "checking for updates" screen. Disconnecting from the Internet during launch of MSFS gets me in the main menu and usually I can then start a flight. Ending a flight the sim again gets stuck and won't go back to the main menu until I disconnect from the internet again.

Sometimes when I get the sim launched this way I still get the low bandwidth error on top of things.
Safe mode doesn't solve this issue, it seems to me another example of one or more issues with their CDN.

I am quite happy to wait until AAU2 for Asobo to fix the low bandwidth MESSAGE but obviously I won't be amused waiting that long for these server issues to be fixed. Since I am now missing the Eastern sales in the marketplace I expect to be fully compensated for this when they have fixed this issue (they are going to fix it, aren't they😟)

Because of these issues, MSFS is starting to lose its appeal to me. The last time I fired up MSFS is almost a week ago and it CTD'd on me. That is perhaps unrelated to these issues but I have had enough for the time being. I am reading a few aviation books instead, finished a few already and currently reading "Fate is the hunter".

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

7 hours ago, cianpars said:

Makes no sense to me David, though I also remember reading this too.  I have 150 mb full fibre and my VPN usually supplies a bandwidth of around 100 mbs depending on which server I'm using, time of day, etc.

If the local Microsoft Azure server is the problem, a VPN can connect you via a different server location.