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Ronald Liu avatar Ubuntu

Media (Youtube Spotify) stutters

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Ronald Liu

Whenever I try to watch YouTube, listen to Spotify or any other video, it stutters to the point it is unwatchable/unlistenable. I have tried to update my wifi driver, but I think it is already up-to-date.

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waltinator avatar Ubuntu
it flag
waltinator

Check your WiFi MTU, using

ip link

also notice your WiFi interface's name.

The MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) is the size of the largest packet that can be sent in a single network transmission. If a packet exceeds the MTU of a link, the data must be split into multiple packets (fragmented). These multiple packets must be sent over the link, received, acknowledged, and reassembled at the far end. If your link is misconfigured, and you have to fragment every packet you send, your actual data transfer rate drops.

Ethernet (wired) networks use an MTU of 1500 bytes.

Due to additional per packet overhead for WiFi (8 bytes PPPoE header), WiFi uses an MTU of 1492.

Your MTU should be set by your DHCP server, check your router's config.

You can set your own MTU (setting does not persist over restarts) with

sudo ip link set dev name mtu 1492

where "name" is the interface name from above.

Here's an example:

walt@squid:~(0)$ ip link
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp63s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:24:21:7f:e5:1c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlxf46d04b1790f: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether f4:6d:04:b1:79:0f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
walt@squid:~(0)$   sudo ip link set dev wlxf46d04b1790f mtu 1492
[sudo] password for walt: 
walt@squid:~(0)$ ip link
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp63s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:24:21:7f:e5:1c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlxf46d04b1790f: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1492 qdisc mq state UP mode DORMANT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether f4:6d:04:b1:79:0f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

My WiFi "interface name" is "wlxf46d04b1790f".

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Ronald Liu avatar
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Ronald Liu
So is this an issue all Ubuntu users have to deal with? And how do I permanently fix this?
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waltinator avatar
it flag
waltinator
Not "all" Ubuntu users, only those using WiFi with a poorly configured DHCP provider (probably your router). As I said in my answer, your MTU is set by the same DHCP server that provides your IP address. Fixing your MTU permanently has to happen on your DHCP server (router).
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