Troubleshooting
Reliability guide libraryStreamwake reliability agents
operate on the failures below.
Each guide walks a single delivery protocol from symptom to root cause — the same checks, the same probes, the same remediation telemetry a Streamwake reliability agent runs on every refresh. Pick the protocol you're shipping.
Protocol guides
Pick the protocol that's failing you.
Each entry below opens on a self-contained reference: what the agent probes, a annotated packet of the artifact being probed, the failure modes we see in the wild, and the path from probe to fix.
Live
MPEG-DASH
Diagnose manifest fetches, segment timelines, representation ladder, and CMAF packaging — the four places a DASH session usually dies before anyone notices.
ProtocolMPD + ISO BMFF
- What Streamwake probes on every MPD refresh
- Anatomy of a minimal-but-realistic .mpd with annotated probes
- Ten recurring failure modes, mapped to root cause and fix
- Replay path: register a DASH source against /api/v1/streams
Live
HLS
Diagnose master-playlist fetches, variant continuity, EXT-X discontinuity boundaries, fMP4 init segments, and AES key exchange — the five places an HLS session usually dies before anyone notices.
Protocol.m3u8 + TS/fMP4
- What Streamwake probes on every master / variant playlist refresh
- Anatomy of a realistic master + variant pair with annotated EXT-X tags
- Ten recurring failure modes, mapped to root cause and fix
- Replay path: register an HLS source against /api/v1/streams
Live
CDN edge failures
Distinguish CDN-side failures from origin or player-side failures — cache misses and stale-on-revalidate, cache-control inheritance, soft-purge gaps, edge POP mis-routing, origin shield saturation, and the multi-CDN races a single HTTP 200 can hide.
ProtocolEdge / origin
- What Streamwake probes on every edge refresh (X-Cache, Age, Via, X-Served-By)
- Anatomy of a CDN response — HIT, MISS, and stale-on-revalidate traces
- Ten recurring CDN failure modes, mapped to root cause and fix
- Replay path: register a CDN probe against /api/v1/streams
Live
ISP congestion vs CDN failure
Synthetic postmortem — same player-visible symptom, one fix on the ISP lane, one fix on the CDN lane. Eight ways the regression shows up, the probe pattern that picks the branch, and the operator runbook on it.
ProtocolISP · CDN
- How Streamwake classifies the incident (top hypothesis + secondary signal lane)
- Triage path per symptom — the probe pattern that disambiguates ISP vs CDN
- Operator fix per branch — which side of the runbook you act on
- Replay path: register an HLS+ISP probe against /api/v1/streams
Live
Player startup
Diagnose a stalled player startup across the three diagnostic lanes — network (manifest fetch, TLS, CORS), init (engine attach, MSE SourceBuffer, EME), and decode (codec negotiation, first-frame, source-buffer quota). One leaf fails; the downstream lanes stay pending.
ProtocolManifest · MSE · DRM
- What Streamwake probes on every startup timeline (player.network · player.init · player.decode)
- Anatomy of a startup timeline with both green and amber verdicts, with the cascade summary
- Ten recurring failure modes, mapped to failing lane triage path and fix
- Replay path: register an HLS+PLAYER probe against /api/v1/streams
Live
LL-HLS optimization
Tune LL-HLS for low-latency without losing the live edge — partial-segment timing drift, BLOCKING vs delta playlist requests, CAN-PRELOAD / EXT-X-PRELOAD-HINT placement, SERVER-CONTROL PART-HOLD-BACK and CAN-BLOCK-RELOAD target-latency tuning, segment vs PART-duration mismatch, and encoder GOP alignment to PART boundaries.
Protocollow-latency + parts
- What Streamwake probes on every LL-HLS delta refresh (part cadence · delta · preload · server control · GOP)
- Anatomy of an LL-HLS variant playlist with PART-INF, PART-DURATION jitter, BLOCKING-replay trace
- Ten recurring LL-HLS failure modes, mapped to root cause and fix
- Replay path: register an HLS+LL probe against /api/v1/streams
Live
DRM
Diagnose DRM failure modes — license-server errors and timeouts, encryption key rotation gaps, certificate and DRM-proxy misconfig, multi-DRM entitlement mismatches (Widevine / FairPlay / PlayReady disagreeing on the same content), and playback breakage scoped to specific CDNs, browsers, and DRM security levels — in terms of what Streamwake reliability agents probe and report.
ProtocolWidevine · FairPlay · PlayReady
- What Streamwake probes on every license fetch and entitlement check (license · key rotation · cert · proxy · entitlement · playback matrix)
- Anatomy of a DRM envelope — license trace, key-rotation init, multi-DRM entitlement cross-check
- Ten recurring DRM failure modes mapped to root cause, fix, and Streamwake rebalance hint
- Replay path: register a DRM probe against /api/v1/streams
Live
Streaming observability
Diagnose the QoE metrics that actually move live and on-demand delivery — rebuffer ratio, video-startup time, manifest-fetch failures, segment-fetch failures by CDN, CDN hit ratio, origin-shield health, and per-(CDN, geo) error rate — plus the instrumentation blind spots between the transcoding pipeline and the CDN edge, and how Streamwake's agentic ops layer bridges them with ranked root cause and a recommended fix.
ProtocolQoE · CDN · edge
- What Streamwake probes on every QoE / edge refresh (rebuffer · startup · manifest · segment · hit ratio · origin shield · edge error rate)
- Anatomy of an observability packet — player event, edge access log, manifest metrics, and ranked root-cause verdict
- Ten recurring observability failure modes, mapped to root cause and ranked recommended fix
- Replay path: register an OBSERVABILITY probe against /api/v1/streams