I've been using Jellyfin for about a year. I've experienced many sudden issues with speed or connectivity, but they usually self-resolve over the course of a few days (I'd love to hear what that's about).

Since the last major update, I've had intermittent speed issues. My network is a bit weird, but it's what I have to go with for a while so bear with me...everything is wired cat7a as direct to the router as possible and broadcast exclusively through TailScale. My server (Win10) and another PC (Win11) are the combined shared storage, so I'm assuming one of the main points of failure between these 2 machines are to blame. In other words, the Win11 PC is acting as a shared network folder (where 2/3rd of my media is stored) AND a client (very inefficient I know, but it's worked up until recently).

Today, I tried listening to a lossless song and it was taking about a minute to load 1 second of music. I've never had speeds that slow before.

The server's hardware: -Intel i7-9700k @ 3.60GHz -RAM 16GB -NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Transcode settings enabled: -Hardware acceleration: Nvidia NVENC -H246 -MPEG2 -VC1 -VP8 -Enhanced NVDEC decoder -Hardware encoding

Task Manager for the server shows 95% (~10 Mbps) network usage to be to TailScale and Jellyfin. Network usage for the client is almost 0 Mbps. Memory usage for both machines is below 30%. CPU is less than 10% on both machines. Disk usage is even lower, 0% on both machines. The media in question is stored on HDD on the client-side machine (disk rated for >100MB/s read and write).

Without buying a new drive, NAS, or extra hardware, do you have any tips for troubleshooting my network to see if it's something I can fix? Did I mess any settings up?

Don't know if it's relevant, but I have a Pi-hole and both machines have Simplewall.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Your hardware is more than capable. I'm running on a ten year old dell optiplex and don't have these issues. I suspect your issue is Windows, more specifically something else on windows, such as antivirus, updates etc. blocking disk I/O

[–] LazerDickMcCheese 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I've disabled the native antivirus and Simplewall supposedly blocks most (if not all) of the Microsoft bloat

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm sorry to say but it's Windows. You never really know. Have you considered getting an old optiplex on Amazon Renewed and putting Debian and Jellyfin on that?

Update for the people downvoting:

I am a professional platform engineer. By 'Windows. You never really know' I mean that there are always ten thousand things running, you're never going to have a full grasp of everything that's happening in the way that you could with a stripped down linux environment. My own Jellyfin instance is running on

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590S CPU @ 3.00GHz
8GB RAM
Integrated Graphics
Shipped AUG 2014
Ubuntu 22.04 with deb installation of Jellyfin

All clients connect via Wifi although server is cat5 to switch. Most of my video does not require transcoding. There are plenty of FLAC audio files in my library. I don't see slowdowns as described here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Some basic troubleshooting. Work backwards from that wild setup you described in the OP:

Disable Simplewall and any other firewalls and see if that helps.
If not, temporarily undo your incredibly complicated networking set up. Disable tailscale and create a single network without VPNs or any other complexities and see if jellyfin will work on the 2 for 1 server/storage set up you have. Also temporarily disable pihole’s blocking.
If you’re still hurting, remove the shared storage set up you have and just have jellyfin connected to a single hd to see if that fixes the problem.
If none of those work, then you have a Jellyfin configuration set up problem.

Edit: silly but make sure to reboot your machine in between each of these steps

Edit 2. If you have your jellyfin logs, those will also give you better clues. The above is troubleshooting without logs which is cumbersome.

[–] LazerDickMcCheese 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

So I've tried disabling Simplewall and TailScale in the past, and it hasn't fixed the issue yet after rebooting. As you'd probably expect, the locally stored videos (for example) play marginally faster, but its not enough of a difference to make or break anything. I'll check the logs later, thanks

Edit: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12286637

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I have no clue what could be causing that. I'd start looking into each link in the chain and making sure it's working.

But any halfway reasonable config should be able to handle audio playback, no matter how lossless. Audio-only just doesn't achieve datarates that would choke up... Anything.

Essentially, benchmark file transfers, transcoding, etc. Make sure each step of how it works is in fact working. Check drive SMART health... Whatever you can think of.

Also logs. No need to read through thousands of lines, but looking at the lines time stamped around when the issue occurs is always a good idea. FFMPEG logs, JF logs, client player logs, does SMB or whatever network drive protocol you're using have logs? If it does, check em.

[–] LazerDickMcCheese 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Outside of Jellyfin, the computers seem to communicate just fine. Transfer speeds are what I would expect and disk read/write is usually fine as well. Like I mentioned in the post, it self-resolved since I made the post. But my concern is the same: what could be causing the underlying issue? I'll check the logs later and I'll report back

Edit: forgot to mention that I have a few 5.1 SACDs @ 24/192k that have always completely choked my system. Doesn't matter which machine or how extreme the transcoded settings are, it nukes the playback

[–] LazerDickMcCheese 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So I checked the available logs after streaming a playlist for a while, which I've never done before (probably a huge mistake on my part). I have a generic "log_xxxxxxx.log" file that doesn't seem to have any relevant info, but the only ffmpeg logs I have are related to video files from yesterday. Interestingly, the transcoding speeds seem to slow down over time; flac/wav files seem fine at first, but struggle to play after 30 minutes or so in a playlist of constant playback.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

@LazerDickMcCheese @MentalEdge have you tools to monitor temperatures ? From what you've just said almost sounds like thermal throttling....

As short tests would give it a chance to cool off, while a heavy consistent load would slowly creep them temps up. Hwmon is what I used back in my windows days.

A friend had an nvidia card where the fan had stopped. He could play games fine for a short while (an hour or so) but after that it started to lag really.

[–] LazerDickMcCheese 1 points 5 months ago

I downloaded it and streamed audio that slows everything to a halt (5.1 SACD 24/192k). HWMonitor says the CPU is 30-34°C and GPU is 47-48°C with a hotspot of 60°C. My internal heat monitors show 30°C or less