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General Discussion

William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points
Posted by William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points

Are there going to be any changes to video quality and/or hosted infrastructure to improve the service?

I'm concerned about extreme buffering issues. I've tested on multiple devices, DNS providers, against a variety of multimedia sites, and run speed tests on the devices used for testing. I've also done all of the generic analysis on CPU, RAM, disk I/O, and network speed. This doesn't seem to be an end user problem, but a problem with the infrastructure platform (I see you're on pubnub). I'm alerting you as I am a datacenter professional who has used your service with no complaints in the past, but is currently experiencing an extremely poor user experience which makes me question whether to continue and/or recommend the platform to others.

Are there any plans to fix this? I see the de facto answer is "just download it on iTunes if you're a Pro user" but that does not address the platform issue at hand.

For what it's worth, I'm not trying to be a Negative Nancy here. I really enjoy the service when it works correctly. I'm just recommending an honest talk with the people running my infrastructure roadmap/budget.

Richard Hall
Richard Hall
9,139 Points
Richard Hall
Richard Hall
9,139 Points

What region are you from William?

Jason Anders
Jason Anders
Treehouse Moderator 145,858 Points
Jason Anders
Jason Anders
Treehouse Moderator 145,858 Points

I haven't encountered any issues with the UI. I'm on a newer iMac, but have the lowest possible cable internet package, as I can't justify a higher package. My max download speed is 10Mbps. So, I'm not sure why you would be experiencing problems, as I have had zero buffering issues in the Year and a bit that I've been on Team Treehouse. A few of my friends are also currently doing courses on Treehouse. They also have the minimum internet package. I've talked to them and none has any buffering issues either.

Occasionally, if I'm sitting outside, I will do some of the course on my (very) old Mac Book Pro. Again, with no issues. So, I'm not sure what you are encountering, but I hope it all gets worked out for you.

:dizzy:

4 Answers

William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points
William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points

I'm in the Phoenix metro area. I'll admit it's been a while since I have been active on here and am not sure if there were backend changes in that time period. Service used to be great in my area. I'm also unsure if this is just a temporary configuration issue and apologize if I was presumptuous and/or snarky sounding with the roadmap remark. Being in the industry myself, I understand there might be a myriad of root causes.

Richard Hall
Richard Hall
9,139 Points
Richard Hall
Richard Hall
9,139 Points

I think it may be an issue in your area unfortunately. :(

I've used the service at home, work and college and it has been business as usual for me. I've probably had more issues with YouTube in recent memory than Team Treehouse.

Have you tried using a smart phone off of wi-fi or accessing the service somewhere else away from where you were having issues? Maybe the local library?

William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points
William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points

So after a bit of fiddling around, I have observed the following results, and validated that any latency is indeed on the teamtreehouse.com backend:

  1. I tried to view a video on a 100Mbps Time Warner link in downtown Phoenix and a 20Mbps link in Mesa and had similar poor buffering experiences on both.
  2. I then attempted to view on a phone connected to the 20Mbps link via Wi-Fi and found it to perform as expected. Since it's following the same route, I assume video compression is allowing it to be served faster as my link is nowhere near maxed out when on a standard laptop and buffering is extreme.
  3. I ran a traceroute to videos.teamtreehouse.com and teamtreehouse.com. Consistently, the highest latency hops were at the last hop internal to their firewall (which timed out - meaning they are not returning tracert data from their firewall per security best practice) with the exception of one route which was the direct ingress to their firewall and makes me believe it is in the same datacenter. I go from around 30ms latency on my end up to 161ms latency on the teamtreehouse hops, which isn't necessarily that great for HD video.

Hopefully my investigation will assist them in improving the service. I'm not trying to throw darts here, as I really like the service when it works well. I look forward to hearing a response from the staff and hope the findings posted assist in some way.

Richard Hall
Richard Hall
9,139 Points
Richard Hall
Richard Hall
9,139 Points

Interesting.. I'm on BrightHouse (sub of Time Warner.) Have you tried shooting an email to TTH support? Hope you get your issue fixed soon.

Nathan Williams
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Nathan Williams
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 6,851 Points
Nathan Williams
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Nathan Williams
Python Web Development Techdegree Student 6,851 Points

Hey William,

Sorry to hear you're experiencing latency troubles. Would you mind sharing your traceroutes? Feel free to email me direct if you prefer ( first name at teamtreehouse.com).

Regards,

Nathan

William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points
William Jordan
William Jordan
10,211 Points

Sorry for taking a day to reply - the good news is that I'm not experiencing the issue anymore. The last hop is only in the mid 60ms range now. If it happens again, I will be sure to email you directly. I was seeing latency about 3 times higher the other day, all day. For now, I'm up and running, as shown below!!! :)

1 3 ms 70 ms 2 ms 192.168.0.1 2 30 ms 24 ms 35 ms phnx-dsl-gw66.phnx.qwest.net [67.40.227.66] 3 27 ms 60 ms 29 ms phnx-agw1.inet.qwest.net [75.160.238.9] 4 * 41 ms 37 ms los-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net [67.14.102.110] 5 63 ms 43 ms 44 ms 63-235-40-146.dia.static.qwest.net [63.235.40.146] 6 44 ms 41 ms 42 ms sjo-b21-link.telia.net [62.115.116.40] 7 59 ms 59 ms 59 ms sea-b1-link.telia.net [80.91.253.22] 8 * * * Request timed out. 9 62 ms 67 ms 66 ms 151.101.52.67