S3: Connection timed out

[Konrad_Hosemann]

We are using direct S3 streaming, which is a huge advantage for us. However recently some of our customers started complaining about unreliable streaming which apparently is caused by these errors:

HTTPByteReader.sendRequest[http://mybucket.s3.amazonaws.com:80/myvideo.mp4]: java.net.SocketException: Connection timed out

We were not able to identify any pattern when these errors happen, it is not bound to any specific video, bucket, client or time. Any idea how to track these problems down? We are using a m1.small instance in eu-west-1a and euro buckets.

thanks,

konrad

[Richard_Lanham]

It might be network problems in AWS that are beyond control, is my first guess.

Does it happen with new content? S3 does replication, so I think it is possible that a request for content might be made to a location that it does not exist at yet.

Richard

[Charlie_Good]

We already re-try 3 times if a request fails. When we do this we create a new TCP connection to S3. In the past there have been a few bad days where several customers had similar problems. In general the next day everything was fine.

Charlie

[Richard_Lanham]

I’m not sure. Can’t hurt to try to contact AWS support too.

Richard

[Richard_Lanham]

What is the problem exactly? Do you have vods3 working at all?

Richard

[scott_freeman]

We are having similar issues with S3 getting media file connection errors using a devpay instance. they play fine one day and the next several are not available. You can check the file directly in S3 from the AWS console and they play fine http progressive through the browser. This is the 2nd time this has happened in 3 weeks. It does mysteriously resolves itself after a undetermined amount of time. We, TVW are managing this server for another LARGE state legislative entity and this is now a issue. Do you have any leads or can I assist in troubleshooting?

[Hugo_De_Zela]

We already re-try 3 times if a request fails. When we do this we create a new TCP connection to S3.

Can you post how you configured this please? I’m having the same problem and can’t figure it out.

[Morgan_Catlin]

Can we increase the timeouts?

[Konrad_Hosemann]

Nope. Today it happend with files that are on S3 for one week.

So you would recommend approaching Amazon? Do you see a possibility to implement some sort of workaround in Wowza? Like reducing the timeout and trying a few times before giving up with an error. A quick search turned out, that such problems just seem to happen from time to time with S3…

konrad

[Lisa_Wong]

Other users have reported something similar and then the problem mysteriously goes away. Do you see any pattern of when the problem occurs? Does it happen with new content? Have you tried contacting Amazon when it occurs to see if there might be a network issue?

-Lisa