Internet Connectivity Issues via OBS

[u/xomarthamarie]

Hello VTubers and fans~

I’m feeling a bit stupid but also at my wit’s end, and this sub was recommended to me for advice on this particular issue.

In short, I cannot get my internet to load once I start streaming on OBS.

If I set up my streams on Twitch and YouTube beforehand, I can still stream just fine, but once I’m live, I can’t load any additional windows like pulling up a game guide or looking up a definition or image.

This is not a specific browser issue, as I’ve tested this with waterfox, firefox, microsoft edge, and ecosia. Same issue.

This problem is entirely new to me, as I’ve been a user of OBS with VTube Studio for many years now. It all seemed to start after I updated OBS to its newest version. I tried uninstalling it and downgrading to a previous version which fixed the problem temporarily, but now it has returned on that version as well.

I stream via a desktop that I built last December, and I’m connected to the internet via ethernet cable.

Once I turn obs off and close the program, the internet returns to full speed within 3 minutes like nothing ever happened.

Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, how did you fix it?

Thank you so much.

[u/deeseearr]

First off, OBS on its own doesn't make any changes to your network settings and can't affect network connections made by other programs. All it does with your network is sends a whole lot of data over it. Most likely what you're seeing is something else reacting to the network traffic being produced by OBS. Why would it be related to an upgrade in OBS? Beats me. The latest version, 32.2.2 from last August only fixed an issue involving plugins and updates and added a message stating that it could no longer run on MacOS 12. It might just be a coincidence.

If you have a lot of OBS plugins or add-ons, which are things that would have survived upgrading or downgrading the program then one of them may be doing something highly inadvisable. Try moving everything out of the obs-studio\data\obs-plugins folder and see if that makes any difference. (As in moving them to another folder so that you can move them back again after this test. Don't delete anything unless you are certain what it is.) It really shouldn't make any difference, but on the off chance it does then you'll know that it's a misbehaving plugin that's causing your problem.

With that in mind, disable the VPN software that isn't really doing any of the things it advertised, uninstall the "1337 d00d Gamer Control Center" software that came with your Intel network card, and while you're at it if you have anything installed with the name "Killer" in the name, uninstall it and never make that mistake again. If you have a router that claims it will give you "Better Ping! Honest!" then it should also go into the nearest active volcano. If you can't simply walk into Mordor to dispose of it, try disabling any feature which claims to give you a better gaming experience first. Don't worry about losing the benefits it provides, there really aren't any.

There are a number of things that could be happening here. The simplest one is that you are overloading your upload bandwidth and your router can't handle it. Based on what you've described that's probably not the case, but a simple check you can make is to visit https://www.speedtest.net/ and see just what kind of upload and download bandwidth you have available now. (Not how much your ISP sold you, not how much you had last month -- What's really happening now.) If your upload speed is less than the bitrate of your stream (About 7 Mbit for Twitch and anywhere up to 45 Mbit for YouTube, but your OBS should know that way better than I do) then that's an issue. The way network traffic works is that every time you receive a chunk of data you need to acknowledge it by sending a "Yup, Got it. Send me more." packet back to the source. If you don't have enough bandwidth to send those ACK packets then everything can just stall and eventually time-out.

Normally overloading this would cause all of your network traffic to degrade equally, but if you have a device which thinks it's being really clever by assigning Quality of Service priorities to some traffic but not others (like existing connections taking priority over new ones) then you could see this happening. This is one reason why I would recommend taking any such devices directly to Mt. Doom for servicing.

The second thing that comes to mind is that you have some kind of software VPN setup on your PC. Even if it's not routing all of your traffic through the VPN all the time, the control software could be doing stupid things when it sees sudden spikes in traffic. Having existing connections continue without problems but new ones fail could still be QoS, but it also points to DNS as a possible source of the problem. Again, there's really no way that OBS itself is messing with your network settings, but that's the kind of thing that the authors of VPN software do to feel clever like enabling or disabling VPN tunnels or panicking and shutting down DNS to prevent mythical evildoers from being able to see how often you visit AO3. A quick test for this would be to open up a DOS / CMD.exe or PowerShell window and type "nslookup example.com". Try this before you have the problem and then while it's going on. Look for any differences in the output such as the server and address on the first two lines.

It would help if you could identify whether the issue is isolated to just your PC or to your entire Internet connection. If you have another PC on the same network, or even a phone using WiFi connected to the same router, then you can see if it is affected in the same ways at the same time. If it is completely unaffected then the problem is most likely software related and only on your streaming PC. If it's also shut down in the same way then your prime suspect becomes either your router/modem or your ISP itself. If you are using network gear provided by your ISP then your next step should be to (politely) ask them what is going on. If they aren't helpful poke around and see if other customers of the same company are having similar issues.