Does uploading videos affect a fast NBN internet service for others in the home?

I thought I'd share this interesting observation I made recently. Often we don't really know how one person in a household can affect the experience of another person in a household when both are accessing the internet. In fact, even though people can affect each other, many people won't realise what is happening.

For those following my YouTube channel there's a variety of content but it really all started when I started adding Red light camera/Speed Camera location videos to provide more content/information for those accessing the site www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au. Most of the videos were fairly short at about 1-3 minutes, covering from the speed camera warning sign or speed sign before a camera and then some time after the intersection.

As I could afford better technology I was able to capture longer videos and I could include the location of red light camera/speed camera as part of longer videos. This then led to posting dashcam videos of longer drives. My thought was I could use the videos for other things such as enjoying the longer drive videos whilst I was perhaps exercising on an exercise bike.

Then naturally I went to the next step where I could have videos of bike rides to enjoy whilst exercising on the exercise bike over winter. Now whilst I haven't actually done much watching of videos on the exercise bike, the videos are there if I need them and other people can use them as well.

Back to the point of this post. Videos by their very nature are quite large, some being 10GB, 20GB or larger. So far the longest video, which is over two and a half hours viewing time comes in at 61GB. That's a huge file. The question is how does uploading such a large video file impact other people on the home network.

The first thing to keep in mind is different people on the home network are generally using different devices and could be using different applications. People can have NBN plans that are up to 100Mbps in terms of downloads and 20Mbps in terms of uploads. Notice how the upload speed is lower than the download speed.

The second thing to keep in mind is when you are watching a video (which is downloading), there's also uploading occuring. In general this is about 85% downloads and 15% uploads. So really having the download speed at about 5 times the upload speed is a good ratio.

The third thing to keep in mind is when you are uploading videos the upload speed is more important as there's much less downloading going on.

The forth thing to keep in mind is each of your devices only consider it's own needs. They don't consider the needs of anyone else on the local network.

If all people in the house are watching streaming videos they're all using a similar ratio of downloads to uploads. Let's take Netflix for example. Netflix recommends around 3Mbps for standard definition movies and 5Mbps for high definition. If we estimate upload speeds for back traffic at around 20%, that's the same ratio as our NBN internet services back traffic (uploads) would not overwhelm the watching of videos (downloads) until there were up to 20 users in theory, but less in practice.

Browsing the internet, general email and other activities use quite low amounts of traffic, so people using these applications would often not see any impact.

However, what happens in my situation where one user is uploading videos to their YouTube site. In theory a single computer on a network performing uploads could consume almost the entire upload capacity (which is also true for file downloading from a fast site) and that is what does happen.

In this case a single computer performing an upload to YouTube caused a person watching Netflix to have their video pausing on an annoyingly regular basis. The watching experience was interrupted regularly, perhaps even every 20 seconds. In effect the one computer performing an upload can impact every person on the home network and this is very noticeable when someone is watching a video over the internet. This was on an NBN service rated at 100Mbps with an upload speed of 20Mbps.

It's important to understand how the usage of the people in your home may be affecting each other. Poor performance of a service may not be because of the service itself, but by others in your home. There are many services that allow people to include videos in their online presence such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., and if one person in your home is posting a video, they can have an impact on everyone else. That's not really a problem if people know what's going on as they can work together to make sure their activities don't affect each other. However it can be a problem when you don't know what's going on and pay for higher levels of service that don't perform any better.

As an extreme example, the bike trail ride of the Main Yarra Trail is around two and a half hours viewing time and 61GB in size. With a 100Mbps NBN plan you get an upload speed of 20Mbps. Assuming you had the upload run at full speed, the 61GB file would take six and three quarter hours. During that time anyone else using the internet could find significant delays, with the most noticeable affect being for those watching streaming on demand.

Hopefully by understanding a little more about what is happening when you're using the internet in your home this makes it easier, less frustrating and perhaps less expensive.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

iPad Air 2 keeps beeping when connected to MacBook Air via USB cable.

I must admit this was quite weird. I connected the iPad Air 2 to the MacBook Air using the USB cable. I was expecting to see message in the iPad and MacBook to give access and trust each other but that didn't happen. All that happened was the iPad Air 2 just keep beeping and I couldn't unlock the iPad. As soon as I press the Home button and started to enter the unlock code the screen flashed off.

A search of the internet gave many suggestions such as faulty cable, hardware issue, but this didn't make sense. Using the same cable I was able to connect to a Windows 10 notebook, access and copy off all the folders containing photos and also perform a full backup and upgrade to the latest version of iPadOS 14.3.

Using the MacBook Air I could literally do nothing with the iPad.

Since I knew there was nothing wrong with the iPad or cable,  I did wonder if the issue may be the iPad was trying to draw more power than the MacBook Air would provide. The MacBook Air's battery isn't great even though it was fully charged and the MacBook Air was running with the power plugged in..

One of the things I wanted to do with the iPad Air 2 was to find out the battery health using coconutBattery on the MacBook Air. With the iPad continuously beeping this was not possible. The battery on the iPad Air 2 at that time was reading 75%. I decided to fully charge the iPad's battery and then see what would happen.

After fully charging the iPad Air 2 and connecting to the MacBook Air using the USB cable the beeping had gone and I was able to access the iPad Air 2 as normal. The iPad Air 2 battery was reading 88% capacity so there appeared to be no issue with the iPad Air 2..

Exactly what the problem was is hard to tell. The solution to access the iPad Air 2 was to fully charge the iPad, however it's not known if the connection was continue to work as the iPad's charge reduced. It does seem the iPad Air 2 was having a power issue with the cable. Perhaps there's a worn contact on the cable reducing the power/voltage available. Perhaps it's an issue with how much power the MacBook Air could provide. I don't know the exact reason but hopefully knowing how I got around the issue and that using a Windows 10 computer solved my problems, may help others.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Is upgrading an iPad making the device obsolete?

Recently a person's iPad Air 2 needed to be upgraded from iPadOS 13.2 to iPadOS 14.3. The iPad had around 800 megabytes of space left, which was nowhere near as much memory as required to upgrade the iPad. The iPad did indicate a little more than 3GB was required to upgrade, but without deleting the users photos (or uploading them to Apple's cloud), the person didn't have sufficient free memory to perform the upgrade directly on the iPad.

When you don't have sufficient free memory to upgrade the iPad an alternative method is to use iTunes on a Mac or PC. I first tried using an older MacBook Air, but all that happened was the iPad kept beeping. Next I installed iTunes onto a notebook computer and performed the upgrade. It never ceases to amaze me how Apple's own equipment often doesn't work and yet a PC does. In fact I couldn't even connect the iPad to the MacBook Air to backup the photos. I performed a full copy of the photo folder and then subsequently did a backup using iTunes.

Note: When I plugged the iPad into the PC iTunes prompted to do a Download and Update, or just a Download. Actually I didn't want to do either but there was no other option to select. I'd recently learnt a lesson upgrading an iPhone, the Download and Update option also subsequently provided a backup option. The Update bricked the iPhone so luckily the backup had been successfully performed or the person would have lost all their content on the iPhone. I prefer not to be in the situation where a person can lose all their data. They tend not to be very happy at all if that happens.

For the iPad I choose to do the Download. Once that was done I had access to backup through iTunes. It's good to know, select Download, then do a backup, then do an upgrade is available. It's just not an immediately available option with Apple. I have found in the past Apple doesn't always do things in what I'd consider a logical order.

So how much memory was lost upgrading from iPadOS 13.2 to iPadOS 14.3? 

According to iTunes, before the upgrade there was 3.44GB of memory free, after the upgrade to iPadOS 14.3, the amount of free memory was now 1.48GB. That's a loss of nearly 2GB of memory that is no longer available to the user, or put another way, around 500 photos. Apple really should focus on providing smaller upgrades (or even reducing the size of the iPadOS code) as losing 2GB is pretty much equivalent to losing around 25% of person's available memory on the iPad.

Whilst I haven't really noted the amount of free memory lost in previous upgrades, you do have to wonder how much free memory has been lost over the years as Apple updates their iPadOS operating system.

An average person could only see this as a way that Apple is obsoleting their equipment and over time, forcing them to update their equipment.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Print screen on the HP Envy x360 13.3-inch R5-4500U/8GB/512GB SSD 2 in 1 Device

Recently purchased a new HP Envy x360 13.3-inch R5-4500U/8GB/512GB SSD 2 in 1 Device and as expected, a new device means there will be some differences.

The first is there's no HDMI port to connect to a large screen TV.

Solution: Whilst I haven't tried this, based on my reading you can use a USB-C to HDMI cable or adapter and these are inexpensive and available in stores like Kmart and BigW.

Another issue is I often use the PrtSc (Print Screen) on computers to capture the current screen. There is no dedicated PrtSc key on the keyboard, but there is prt sc printed on the right shift key. There's nothing in the manual to indicate how to use this key.

I found two ways to use the Prt Sc key. The first is to press the Function key and then the right shift key whilst holding down the Function key. You can now use insert to insert the image into the program of your choice. But this has an issue. The first time you do this (and future times if you don't select an option) a One Drive option appears. If you select No Thanks, the image is copied to the clipboard as we're used to. I don't really want to copy the image to One Drive so I don't use that option. In other words don't ignore the prompt that pops up. I copy screen images from video files I create and if you haven't selected the option No Thanks, the Prt Sc doesn't work.

The second option is to use Windows Key + Shift + S. That is press the Windows Key, whilst holding down the Windows Key, then press and hold down the Shift key, then press the S key. This use the newer Snip & Sketch program. A line of options appears across the screen and the common ones I use is a to copy either the entire screen, or a section of the screen.

A lot of the time I now use the Snip & Sketch program for capturing screen images when I want to save the image, but the old Prt Sc button comes in handy for a quicker copy and paste option.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au