I'm only using Windows Defender with OBS as an exception through it, no third party security software to my knowledge.
Typically, You do NOT need an exception to send streaming traffic. In general, traffic is blocked from getting to your PC, most Outbound traffic is unfiltered.
No router/gateway change at my house. In fact, my router was in the other room while I was streaming 2K over Wifi (I know, I know, but it worked for so long and I was lazy) happily for months until this issue started, whereupon I moved the modem and router into the same room as the PCs and got new ethernet cables but nothing got better despite the connection and latency being reduced.
Unless you have real-time Wifi & RF monitoring, you have no idea what sources of WiFi interference may be occurring. especially if you have neighbors. that WiFi worked before is largely irrelevant (unless you live in a rural area, your closest next door neighbors is more than many hundreds of yards/meter away, and you can NOT see any other WiFi SSIDs. And you know every signal WiFi client, and have them turned off while testing. ... the number of people who meet that criteria is exceptionally small. Every one - is foolish to make ANY assumptions (unless network engineer with real-time RF monitor tools operations and expertise in reading said tools output) about WiFi operation.
Hence you testing needs to be via Ethernet. Almost all other tests aren't worth the time/effort to perform, especially for network issues, and you have a massive blind spot in exactly the area you are trying to troublshoot
In fact, I was running whatever the automatic enhanced broadcasting had for tracks OVER the Wifi streaming 2K with 0 issues for a long time. So my upload speed is definitely enough, it's not that. I had solid 23,000 kbps bitrate the whole time. I also only pay $80 a month for my internet.
If you have ever driven in an urban area, you know that saying "but I can normally drive to work (or wherever in X amount of time)" does not mean that an accident, construction, or similar won't change things. The difference is you can see those obstructions/congestion. Such visibility is a challenge for Internet traffic, but similar traffic issues arise... it is just that aside from streaming traffic, most data download traffic has buffers built-in to mask jitter, latency, etc.
At this point I'm convinced that it's my ISP. How else could it go from perfect to 0% quality overnight otherwise with no settings or hardware changes?
That conclusion is based on an assumption about what is happening on your LAN that is NOT grounded in knowledge, but just hope. And that doesn't count for anything in technical troubleshooting, especially when having conversation with ISP
I could rattle off MANY circumstances that could cause a change in traffic behavior having nothing to do with your ISP. That doesn't mean the ISP isn't your issue, but assuming they are is not a good idea.
I asked earlier to learn or for tips on learning anything I'm ignorant on. I'd love to learn whatever monitoring is necessary; but it's just myself and my wife in our house and my security on my network is pretty good (password is very long and ludicrously random), so I'm not sure what traffic might be on there that would be clogging anything.
