How to Fix Restream Internet Connectivity Issues

Restream helps millions of live streamers all over the world spread their content on multiple social platforms at the same time. It is definitely one of the most powerful live streaming platforms at the moment. Restream can be used for free and it also has some paid tiers, that bring some extra features. But the basics of live streaming are available for free, including multistreaming to 30+ platforms.

Whether you're going live on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Live and other platforms - fast and reliable upload connectivity is something you'll need in order to get the best video quality for your Restream live streaming. 

Dropped frames, buffering, low quality video and even disconnects from the streaming server - these are just a few symptoms of a bad Internet connection. That can lead to:

• You appearing unprofessional to your audience.
• You losing followers, if this happens frequently.
• You losing progress in a game you're streaming with Restream or people missing important bits from a discussion or interview.

Find out how you can fix and avoid Restream issues related to your Internet connectivity and get fast and reliable Internet at all times. This way, you can focus on the live streaming and not on troubleshooting the problems of your Internet connection.

Ever wondered why your Restream live stream is experiencing issues? Or why you're dropping frames, buffering, or getting network errors?

These are just a few of the issues that often come up in the Restream live streaming community. Dropped frames, choppy and low video stream quality and disconnects are usually related to connection issues. What you can do here is contact your ISP, choose another streaming server, restart your network equipment - more in this comprehensive troubleshooting guide.

Multistreaming with Restream requires a steady and fast Internet connection so your stream’s video quality doesn’t drop or disconnect. That’s why Internet connectivity is very important. Here at Speedify we get that - our service does everything to help live streaming - from optimizing live streams to making sure you never get offline during a stream.

Restream is the preferred platform for live multistreaming for many content creators. It’s available for free as well, and it’s very easy to use and configure, as it runs from within the browser on any operating system.

Since here at Speedify we help live streamers improve their broadcasts, we always want to know exactly how much our service helps content creators. So, we put Speedify to the test with Restream for live streaming on Twitch. Below are the results we got from testing and how you can enhance your live streams. Naturally, you can also forget about issues such as dropped frames, buffering, disconnects and network errors.

There are many online reviews and discussions where streamers agree that Speedify helps their live streaming. But we wanted to test it ourselves and see exactly how much it does that. Especially now, when we have the brand new Speedify protocol in place.

Test setup: our goal is to evaluate Twitch live streaming improvements with Restream when using Speedify vs. not using Speedify. So we ran multiple tests on a HD video stream. Data is according to the Twitch Inspector tool.

All tests were conducted via Restream on a Desktop PC running Windows 10 20H12 featuring a Ryzen 5 1600x GPU with 16 GB DDR4 RAM.

Streaming video: 720p @ 30 fps, 30 minutes video

Restream and Speedify settings were left to their default. When active, Speedify was connected to the closest server (Vienna or Belgrade). The numbers are from the Twitch Inspector Tool.

Testing scenarios: we tested with and without Speedify using one or more of these Internet connections:

• Bad Wi-Fi: a limited Raspberry Pi access point with 1 Mbps download / upload speeds
• Wi-Fi connection: 50 Mbps download / 40 Mbps upload
• Cellular hotspots

TEST RESULTS

The first test was using the 50 / 40 Mbps Wi-Fi connection. There was no significant improvement in terms of bitrate when using Speedify vs. not using Speedify. That's mainly because the bitrate needed to stream a HD video at 30 fps is covered by the Wi-Fi connection.

720p  @ 30 fps streaming	Wi-Fi No Speedify	Wi-Fi + Speedify	Wi-Fi + Cell + Speedify	Wi-Fi + 2 Cell + Speedify
Bitrate Average:	2,800 kbps	2,799 kbps	2,806 kbps	2,803 kbps
Bitrate Max:	2,955 kbps	3,342 kbps	3,610 kbps	3,588 kbps
Bitrate Min:	2,152 kbps	2,240 kbps	2,465 kbps	2,617 kbps
Framerate Average:	30 fps	30 fps	30 fps	30 fps
Framerate Max:	30 fps	30 fps	30 fps	30 fps
Framerate Min:	30 fps	30 fps	30 fps	30 fps

Now, when it comes to live streaming from a bad Wi-Fi connection (think IRL, streaming anywhere outside of your home or studio) - Speedify is a real game changer. The improvement we saw when combining multiple internet sources with Speedify was up to 69% vs. no Speedify on a bad Wi-Fi connection. And, naturally, it would have gone even higher as Restream would have needed a higher bitrate.

Also, as opposed to other live streaming solutions, Restream does not lower the video quality to maintain the number of frames per second. That's why we got some choppy 4 fps video when using that bad Wi-Fi.

720p @ 30 fps streaming	Bad Wi-Fi	Bad Wi-Fi + Speedify	Bad Wi-Fi + Cell + Speedify	Bad Wi-Fi + 2 Cell + Speedify
Bitrate Average:	1,375 kbps	1,432 kbps	1,849 kbps	2,326 kbps
Bitrate Max:	1,924 kbps	2,033 kbps	2,215 kbps	3,010 kbps
Bitrate Min:	908 kbps	1,028 kbps	1,129 kbps	2,211 kbps
Framerate Average:	4	9	29	30 fps
Framerate Max:	4	9	30	30 fps
Framerate Min:	0	6	0	30 fps

TAKEAWAYS FROM THE TESTING TEAM

• Fully featured live streaming platform, comparable to professional software - multi channel streaming, metric reports, scenes and backgrounds, user friendly, built-in stream chat.
• Browser-based = reachable from any device, anywhere
• Free version is limited to live streaming in 720p with watermark.

Connection bonding for faster, more reliable Internet connectivity comes in different forms. Speedify is the software flavor. Another much more costly flavor is dedicated hardware rigs, such as the LiveU series or Peplink bonding routers. Ultimately it’s your choice, but here are the main perks Speedify brings to the table versus those hardware options:

• the Speedify protocol - opening up to 8 parallel sockets on each combined connection and intelligently utilizing them to prioritize your streaming traffic
• dedicated servers for those truly dedicated live streamers - more performance, closer to the streaming ingest servers, and guaranteed service level agreements.
• flexibility - you don’t have to carry a dedicated bonding device with you. Speedify can run on the device you’re streaming from. Or you can use Speedify to set up a custom dedicated bonding router on Windows or Linux, if you want.
• cost - only a small fraction of what you have to pay for the dedicated hardware.

Somebody whose company and job depends on successful live streaming said this about Speedify: