I'm a full time broadcaster, 20 upload plan and cannot encode 2800kbs to Twitch.tv servers.

Some things to note:

We have a VPN and are pretty confident we are safe from DDoS currently. We only use the static IP's to better cloak ourselves. Though we are also under the impression that a ddos attacks generally take us completely offline, download and all right?

We have a tech coming out tomorrow morning before our next broadcast and are running a some tests broadcasts to recreate the dropping frames while sending Pings to the modem, our first and second hop, and google, to narrow down where the problem is actually occurring.

So far my modem is clean of failed pings, but my first and second hop failed a few times when dropping frames.

I'm starting to suspect its the local lines, we currently have an orange line on the ground waiting to be put into the ground and a lot of kids in the area who could have walk or tripped on it. We were streaming throughout the week without problems, it wasn't until this big stream weekend we ran into problems leaving me to believe something changed from then to now. We aren't ruling out a timed DDoS attack just yet, but we have been DDos'd quite a bit before and it didn't give the same signs.

Hello Dmachine and welcome,

I do not have your exact network interconnect information so I will be drawing inferences from your post up until now. First, if you are having ANY VPN issues WHATSOEVER, I recommend that you check out this link to make sure all the correct VPN ports are open on your Comcast Gateway (CG). This pertains to any of your CG generic Static IPs or any LAN DHCP address ports.

Secondly, if you are concerned about DDoS attacks, I recommend that you check out this website  for a plethora off DDoS attack preventions you can use for your network interconnect. I can confirm for you that the CG does not have any built-in DDoS protection and this is the Comcast user responsibility.

Thirdly, you mentioned about dropped frames at various hops when pinging sites ; some websites have built-in exessive multi-ping security protection and this could be related to your problem. It is certainly possible that your ethernet wiring  could be your issue considering that this website article  indicates that Ethernet cables require pins 1,2,3, and 6 (orange wire) at a minimum.

Hope this helps you out.

Follow up: The problems continue. We are no longer using a VPN and our internet speeds in general are very inconsistent. Same addresses are timing out and our upload speeds are constantly dropping lower than 5up (we have a 20 up plan) 

We have had three techs come out at this point and each time they do (mid day/morning) the probllem is not happening and they are not able to fix the problems. 

Dmachine,

can you provide the model number of the cable modem you are using?

Do you HAVE to have static IP addresses or not?

Most of these setups I've been involved with, the streamer uploads a single stream from an event to a server at some major colo like a Rackspace server and all the bazillions of streaming clients hook on to that server to leech their streams, is this how your infrastructure is setup?

Or are you trying to host the bazillions of leeches on your own server behind a Comcast cable link?