Update: Progress and puzzles

[RS]

>On 22/08/16 09:36, Jim web wrote:
>> I have go do something else this morning but this prompts me to ask if
>> others are:
>>
>> A) Still having missing segments from hls
>
>> B) now also having trouble with ye olde flash.

Fake or Fortune (b07r1yfh) from last night, downloaded today, had 26 Segment 
not found errors in hlshd1 in a one hour programme.
flashhd1 was fine.

BBC Business Live (b07ps51r) from this morning had 17 Segment not found 
errors in hlshd1 in a half hour programme.
flashhd1 was fine.

After I had downloaded Fake or Fortune the BBC website and iPlayer website 
seemed very slow.  The Business Live hlshd1 download kept stopping and 
averaged about 6Mbit/s instead of 60Mbit/s.  Both flashhd downloads seemed 
to be at normal speed (which is a lot slower than hlshd).

We have speculated that Akamai has applied a fix which has not worked, and 
has made things worse.  It could be coincidence that things have got worse. 
dinky's pre-Olympics list shows that originally only a few programmes were 
affected, and there might be 1 Segment not found error in the hlshd1 mode of 
a programme and with one exception not in any other HLS mode, and in about 
half the cases the error was corrected in about a week.  More recently 
almost every programme has been affected, the problem has spread to other 
HLS modes, the number of Segment not found errors has dramatically 
increased, and is increasing still further as days go by.

To me those are the symptoms of a hardware failure.  It is difficult to 
imagine though how it could be a hardware failure.  Both the BBC and Akamai 
must have heavily replicated hardware with changeover switches so that 
hardware is used in rotation.  Even at my end I have made tests which I am 
reasonably certain have not had any common hardware except for my Point of 
Presence.