SOLVED: Remote connection extremely slow

[flo f]

I noticed today that the connection over the internet (mobile network) is extremely slow. Streaming, downloading and just the UI, even the thumbnails of the media load extremely slow. I tried different devices both ios and android, and apps/browsers. I have jellyfin installed directly on debian stable, v10.9.10. The speedtest on the server and on the mobile devices is all fine, above 20 mbit/s, while the actual rate of loading jellyfin is more like in hundreds of kb/s. I usually use caddy with reverse proxy but I even set up a direct port forwarding to rule this out, same problem. No problems at all in LAN. I'm using a fritzbox as the main router. Please help, it's unusable.

[TheDreadPirate]

When you say "direct port forwarding" I'm assuming you mean you opened port 8096 on your router.

Do you know how to use Docker? Librespeed has a self-hosted speed test you could setup to make sure that the mobile<-->server speed is actually good. Each individual connection can be fast enough, but the route they take to each other can be problematic.

[flo f]

When you say "direct port forwarding" I'm assuming you mean you opened port 8096 on your router.

Do you know how to use Docker?  Librespeed has a self-hosted speed test you could setup to make sure that the mobile<-->server speed is actually good.  Each individual connection can be fast enough, but the route they take to each other can be problematic.

Yes opened a port that jellyfin runs on, to bypass caddy, which runs on 80 and 443. 

Thank you for the reply, you're right about the route. I ran iperf tcp test from different locations and it seems that the mobile network is the problem. Test #1 is LAN (wifi), #2 is mobile and #3 is from my work. Still, I would never have thought that it makes that much of a difference - when I run ookla speedtest or fast.com I'm getting much higher results on mobile (around 50 Mbps).

-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 8097 (test #1)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Accepted connection from 192.168.178.68, port 54717
[  5] local 192.168.178.84 port 8097 connected to 192.168.178.68 port 54718
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-1.00  sec  55.6 MBytes  467 Mbits/sec
[  5]  1.00-2.00  sec  58.9 MBytes  494 Mbits/sec
[  5]  2.00-3.00  sec  62.6 MBytes  525 Mbits/sec
[  5]  3.00-4.00  sec  63.3 MBytes  531 Mbits/sec
[  5]  4.00-5.00  sec  63.6 MBytes  534 Mbits/sec
[  5]  5.00-6.00  sec  63.6 MBytes  534 Mbits/sec
[  5]  6.00-7.00  sec  62.4 MBytes  524 Mbits/sec
[  5]  7.00-8.00  sec  63.3 MBytes  531 Mbits/sec
[  5]  8.00-9.00  sec  62.6 MBytes  525 Mbits/sec
[  5]  9.00-10.00  sec  63.6 MBytes  534 Mbits/sec
[  5]  10.00-10.02  sec  1.31 MBytes  543 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-10.02  sec  621 MBytes  520 Mbits/sec                  receiver
-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 8097 (test #2)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Accepted connection from <mobile_network>, port 15824
[  5] local 192.168.178.84 port 8097 connected to <redacted> port 15831
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-1.00  sec  1.28 MBytes  10.8 Mbits/sec
[  5]  1.00-2.00  sec  231 KBytes  1.90 Mbits/sec
[  5]  2.00-3.00  sec  1.97 MBytes  16.6 Mbits/sec
[  5]  3.00-4.00  sec  55.2 KBytes  452 Kbits/sec
[  5]  4.00-5.00  sec  455 KBytes  3.72 Mbits/sec
[  5]  5.00-6.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec
[  5]  6.00-7.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec
[  5]  7.00-8.00  sec  26.7 KBytes  219 Kbits/sec
[  5]  8.00-9.00  sec  249 KBytes  2.04 Mbits/sec
[  5]  9.00-10.00  sec  0.00 Bytes  0.00 bits/sec
[  5]  10.00-11.00  sec  764 KBytes  6.26 Mbits/sec
[  5]  11.00-11.22  sec  26.8 KBytes  981 Kbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-11.22  sec  5.02 MBytes  3.75 Mbits/sec                  receiver
-----------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on 8097 (test #3)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Accepted connection from <work>, port 23632
[  5] local 192.168.178.84 port 8097 connected to <redacted> port 28887
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-1.00  sec  38.2 MBytes  321 Mbits/sec
[  5]  1.00-2.00  sec  39.4 MBytes  331 Mbits/sec
[  5]  2.00-3.00  sec  35.8 MBytes  300 Mbits/sec
[  5]  3.00-4.00  sec  33.7 MBytes  283 Mbits/sec
[  5]  4.00-5.00  sec  35.0 MBytes  294 Mbits/sec
[  5]  5.00-6.00  sec  35.3 MBytes  296 Mbits/sec
[  5]  6.00-7.00  sec  35.1 MBytes  294 Mbits/sec
[  5]  7.00-8.00  sec  29.9 MBytes  251 Mbits/sec
[  5]  8.00-9.00  sec  37.8 MBytes  317 Mbits/sec
[  5]  9.00-10.00  sec  31.2 MBytes  262 Mbits/sec
[  5]  10.00-10.01  sec  222 KBytes  225 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-10.01  sec  352 MBytes  295 Mbits/sec                  receiver

[flo f]

I thought I'll add what I found out in case someone else has a similar problem. It seems that the mobile network provider is artificially limiting the data rate depending on the destination. I set up a VPN to my home network and it had the same low data rate as without VPN which seems to indicate that it's not based on the type of traffic. Then I tried a a VPN of a commercial VPN provider which meant that for my mobile network provider the destination was one of the commercial VPN servers, and from there the traffic was sent to my home network. This resulted in a data rate much more like the speedtest I'd done. So with home VPN or without any VPN it was around 1-4 Mbps, while with commercial VPN it was over 30 Mbps.