Nest cam causing upload saturation?

[melwong1005]

Anyone using the Nest Cam running into problems? Whenever I connect my Nest Cam, Internet access is lost until I disconnect the camera which indicates a possible upload saturation problem.

My max upload is 1.3Mbps. Nest Cams claim that 500Kbps is needed at most for 720p quality video to be uploaded... https://nest.com/support/article/How-mu ... st-Cam-use. I even dropped video quality down to 360p which should only require 150Kps upload speeds at most.

IP Addresses are valid.
Possibly 1-3 devices are actively accessing the Internet to surf, check email, instant messaging etc. while the camera was connected.
Nothing heavily demanding on upload other than the camera as far as I know.

I am wondering if I am truly facing an upload limitation or perhaps the camera is bunk.

[Guest]

Anyone using the Nest Cam running into problems?

If you're connected using WiFi try wired. I've read about some webcams tend to saturate a WiFi channels.

[bobrk]

Does it stream continuously to the internet?

[melwong1005]

Nest Cams only connect by Wifi and the problem does not appear to be Wifi related.
Yes, the upload stream is continuous so that you can view in near real time and record to a cloud service.

I've never had problems before switching from AT&T Uverse TV+Internet. We assumed that Sonic's service should be no different than AT&T since it is essentially the same product. Apparently, our assumption might not be the case and we wanted to verify before retiring the cam.

[adame]

Without the camera running, do your upload speeds seem roughly comparable to what you were getting with AT&T?

[melwong1005]

Our upload speed max did decrease from 2.0Mbps down to 1.5Mbps when we switched to Sonic. I do notice that sending files does take a slight longer. Otherwise, performance difference is not noticeable during typical activity.

[adame]

Because you're still running on the same architecture, I'm optimistic that we can improve your upload speed, which should hopefully leave some bandwidth room after the Nest cam. Send me a pm or drop me an email (it's just my username at sonic.net) and I'll arrange a call from Support at a time convenient to you.

[melwong1005]

Hey Adam,

I sent a PM to you to see when we can connect over the phone.

Thanks!

[melwong1005]

Just to close out this topic...

Sonic wanted to see if increasing the upload speed would help but AT&T denied further assistance stating that the proper configurations and performance for 20Mbps service. I did have faster upload speeds under AT&T before but that seems to be related to the TV+Internet bundle that I once had. Guess I have to wait for the day that AT&T will somehow get faster speeds to my home so that Sonic can upgrade me to x2.

We still do not know definitively if we have an upload saturation problem or if the camera is having issues. Since nothing else seems to be exposing the problem, I will try to borrow a different Nest Cam or test my cam on a friend's network.

Otherwise, thanks, Sonic and others for reaching out.

[Anonymous 1234]

@melwong1005 I think I have the exact same problem. I've been noticing that my internet performance was not great and had a tech come out to check the line outside and also inside. Did not find anything major however found that unplugging my wireless router the speedtest was much better which meant my router was defective or something on my LAN was causing the issue.

Knowing that, I did some more testing and found that turning off my 3 nest cams made internet work much better.

My line syncs at 25/2.

Before: inconsistent speedtest 10 to 15 down and 1 up

After removing the nest cams: speedtest is 22 down and 2 up

My next step is trying to determine if the issue is that nest causes wifi congestion or nest consuming too much upstream bandwidth.

I thought I'll share and I will update this thread if I make some progress.

What's your status? Did you find a solution?

Cheers
J