Remote Access Issue with Buffering and not connecting

So the internet connection where the Tablo resides has 6mbps upload. It’s on an eero router, connected wirelessly. It works great on local playback when on the same network. When using remote, I get buffering on all settings except 500kbps, which is such low quality it’s unwatchable. Also, there are many times when I get the error that the remote connection cannot be established which is very annoying. If I increase to a higher quality and pause it to create a buffer, the playback is great for however many seconds I paused it to create that buffer, and then I get constant buffering. It seems like it plays until the buffer you created is exhausted, and then starts to try to encode/upload in real time again…if that makes sense…when IMHO it should stay ahead of the buffer you created.

The remote location I am watching from has 60mbps download speeds and I have no buffering issues with any other streaming services.

What can I do to fix these issues? A mesh router is required for the location. Would I potentially have better outcomes by buying an additional eero beacon to place directly next to the Tablo and then hard wiring to that beacon? Not sure if that would do anything since the signal would be still going from Tablo --> beacon --> main beacon but just be hard wired to the first beacon instead of wirelessly connecting to the first beacon as it does now.

Can you re-arrange your setup of mesh devices so you can plug in (aka hard wire) the Tablo to the main beacon?

Also, is this on all playback devices at the remote location? Have you tried a smartphone, a computer?

Also last question, what is the recording quality on hour Tablo set to? With a 6 Mbps upload speed, so use a Remote Streaming Quality of “Full Quality”, you’ll likely have to use the 720p 3 Mbps recording quality.

This figure seems low to me. Have you run a speedtest at that location to determine the actual bandwidth available? In my experience, you need a much higher rated bandwidth to actually do sustained uploads …Just my 2 cents worth.

Thanks for the input guys. It cannot be hard wired to the main router. Recording is at 3mbps. Streaming only works without buffer on 500kbps. This occurs on my cell phone and 3 different firesticks at my remote location. Yes I have run a speed test which is where I got 6mbps upload speed from, which should be more than fast enough for 3mbps streaming since it’s double that. I can’t even get into the Tablo right now … says “Unable to retrieve information for this Tablo from the Tablo servers.”

Well, one would think that, but if you look at what is actually happening on the LAN during Tablo playback, you would see something surprising. The “stream” that Tablo sends is not a smooth constant stream at 3mbs (or whatever the video bitrate is)… no, the stream is a series of bursts. The actual period of transmission is very short, at intervals, at HIGH speed. So I do believe that you need a higher bandwidth, if you want to get playback that looks anything like local LAN playback. How high? I don’t know, but for peak transmission, I think it could easily be triple the bitrate of the video… maybe more. And speedtest is not a very good measure of peak transmission rate… it averages over 20-30 seconds. Remember, the Tablo sees buffering, even on the local LAN, sometimes… and the bandwidth on the LAN is usually at least 80-90mbs, which is 8 or 9 times the bitrate of the best Tablo video quality. So if you can get buffering with that sort of bandwidth, what would you need for smooth playback, at quality, remotely?? I think that 20-25mbs upload bandwidth is not out of the question.

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I agree with this assessment. My upload speed is 10 Mbps and I would get buffering remotely with the 720p 5 Mbps recording quality.

The 720p 3 Mbps is fine remotely.