Why I haven’t been streaming lately

If you’re a regular watcher of my live stream on Twitch.TV, you might have notice that I haven’t really been streaming much lately, and when I do stream, it’s from a different location (as you might have seen from the background in my webcam).

I’ve gotten a handful of people asking me why that is (and one person even going to the extent of asking me if I had quit streaming), so I decided to make a quick blog post describing my current situation.

The reason I haven’t been streaming lately is because the Internet at my apartment is extremely unreliable. My rent payment comes with utilities included, one of which is 50 Mb/s Internet from ResTech Services, an Internet service provider that I believe only serves the Madison, WI area (or, at the very least, their main offices are in Madison). Usually the Internet is okay (although I never get up to 50 Mb/s), but occasionally, I run into severe speed and latency problems.

These problems generally fix themselves, and if not, then I can usually call customer service and ask them to reset some stuff on my account. However, the problem I’ve been facing lately has gone completely unresolved, even though I’ve done thorough investigations and I’ve called my ISP multiple times.

Long story short, my Internet connection drops every 15-20 minutes. Although this isn’t a huge deal for everyday, normal Internet use, it does pose a problem when I’m playing games like League of Legends, or when I’m streaming, which requires a constant and consistent connection with the corresponding servers. Get your connection dropped during a game and it’ll lag you out, rending you unable to control your character while it attempts to reconnect, putting you in a vulnerable position prone to death. Get your connection dropped during a stream and your viewers will constantly have to refresh the stream (if the stream doesn’t automatically restart in their browser), and the recorded replay file is split up into little chunks.

As of right now, my next course of action is to try out a different router than the one I’m using. I find it very difficult to believe that my router randomly decided to start dropping my Internet connection one day, but I still understand that it’s possible, no matter how small the chance.

Until then, all of my streaming will have to be done from an alternative location using a different Internet connection.

Fortunately, my university’s Internet is good enough that I’m able to stream in high definition without any problems. So, I’ve generally been streaming from my psychology research lab office, or a commons (sometimes referred to as a library in the quiet sections) private study room.

I’ll try to keep you guys updated on the status of my Internet, and when I will be able to stream regularly from my apartment again.

 

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