Time Warner Cable Denies Throttling YouTube

Youtube always buffered when I have 50 mbit D3. It still buffers on my 3mbit basic now. Netflix used to be fine, now it stutters when it starts. However I did get the newer Roku 3 which might be part of the issue.

On my fiber link at work (TWC) I still get Youtube buffering.

AT&T 12mbps connection @ work has no buffering on anything.
30mbps home cable connection (local coop provided connection) is awful from 4pm-midnight. This includes netflix/youtube..

I use a free vpn service that works quite well (openvpn) @ resolving my issues. I can stream YouTube/Netflix HD quite well at home with this. I tried blocking the IP ranges & no luck.

Is the easier way to deal with this to just use »www.youtube.com ?

TWC denying that they throttle YouTube (which they obviously are) is a bit like the NSA denying that they spy on every single American (we know they are doing it).

Other than all facts supporting that they're not...

More like Google et al denying that the NSA has direct access to their stuff via PRISM. Which is true. Except the spirit of the question would say that they're lying.

TWC just so happens to have congested transit/peering links to the CDN nodes that serve up YouTube/Twitch streams. And they won't upgrade those links. It's as good as throttling, but you get to pretend that you aren't.

SSH tunneling into a SoftLayer box in Dallas gets around these issues for me, but that shouldn't have to be the case.

I thought what Google said is no equipment was installed on their network. Even if that's true, what is that really saying? Same thing with TWC. They don't "throttle" services but what does that really mean? Not much because they would have to define what throttling means so that we know what it is that they claim they aren't doing. Even then we only one thing they aren't doing but still don't know if they might be doing something else that is causing issues.

Former President Clinton was an expert at telling folks what he didn't do when being questioned about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Of course what everyone really wanted him to do is tell us what he did do. Of course he isn't going to incriminate himself and neither is TWC.

You guys know that if the CDN is hosted outside the providers intranet there are many issues that need to be worked out.

The first is that the DNS request, depending upon who you use for DNS resolution may give a physical location that while optimal for Verizon or TWC may put you on a suboptimal path for contacting the proxy server for Google.

That is why some VPN tunnels work out fine because since this is a shared POP, the caching can be more efficient.

I have also seen that if you change the resolution of the stream, often times that it comes from a different proxy server, and one that will be more optimal.

I switched to the HTML5 version of youtube a few weeks ago and it is much better, however I also run my own DNS caching server (unbound) which I have a lower TTL and that seems to help better as the evening ramp up happens.

The only POP that continues to still be poor is my xbox, and I havent played with it, but I assume that MSFT puts their special sauce in there to stir the pot. I also notice that Netflix streams also bog down in the evening through my xboxes, but work perfectly on my Roku boxes so I can only assume that XBL routes traffic differently than my local network which is now fine.

The good news is that these types of video are stressing the networks, and they will improve them or die trying which is good, because it will just make thinks more efficient.

Also as many of you know for transit, if TWC only buys a few gig, that is what they get. So while their intranet may be chillin, there transit connections may be sucking wind.

I always thought that it would be psychotic to not have CDN proxy servers intra net but here were are for FIOS ye google and netflix don't do it. I know in the case of Netflix, they sorta dictate the CDN proxy servers and also hold back superHD, but hey these pipe vendors will just suffer, or else the 800 tollways take off. Either way the struggle is for contol of your pipe, nothing more... Its not a technical problem that cant be solved..

Its not TWC. its happening on charter even. It is because TWC is not actively throttling it, but they have not upgraded the bandwidth or capacity of their own YT local hosting CDN. All ISPs have been doing that as of late, even Verizon FiOS. You can block your ISPs CDN rehost, which will be within your ISPs IP addresses, and then you will be loading from an official YT server instead of a CDN rehost.

»[OOL] is punishing encrypted YouTube straems at prime time?
»/r0 ··· tled.png

And AT&T...

»slow youtube

And Comcast...

»Is Comcast Throttling YouTube?

Even the darling child, Verizon FiOS.

»Horrible youtube speeds

If you read through some of these topics you'll find that people have figured out that blocking certain IP blocks can improve performance. Given the number of complaints coming from such a wide variety of ISPS, it sounds like a Youtube problem to me.

Or all these ISPs are colluding to hinder youtube's performance in change for "1-800 number of internet".

Furthermore, if youtube was really at capacity, this graph would've been a lot more erratic. Where as here you can clearly see that CV is capping my youtube stream at ~2mbit.

I would argue to say if the difference wasn't a matter of 600KB to 200KB/s Cablevision might be up to something. That's a ridiculously large margin of error to exclude everything else from the equation as is.

If it wee something like 200KB/s and 210KB/s solid, then we'd likely have a probable case.

MTS Manitoba (Can) seems to be having this issue for the last little while too. Horrible streaming speed and rebuffs non stop on youtube yet everything else appears to work fine.

I've been having issues with YT using Sprint LTE here of late.

I had opposite issue w/Netflix. Could not use Neflix on TWC couple nights ago so used Sprint LTE wifi tether and Netflix worked.

My Slingbox locks up in a few days on TW Syracuse--even after upgrading service to the next tier. Tech support offers no help at all. This has been going on for two years.

I use a small local ISP and Netflix works great but YouTube does not so I'm not thinking it's Time Warner causing the trouble. I also have trouble with the History Channel from time to time. Hulu free works fine as well and many internet video feeds but I think it's a YouTube problem some where along the way.

Just my 2 cents....

Small local cable ISP here in PA. I have a 15/2 connection.

YouTube is unwatchable for me as well. It's always pausing and buffering.

I use a laptop for streaming. I don't have Netflix- but am able to stream just fine from all the other video sites I use.

I think YouTube itself has issues as well.

My 3MB line would buffer even after doing the IP block. I found some other threads that said use a VPN proxy and since I installed one called SpotFlux, I've not had any buffering issues, even at 720 and that is a lot to ask of a 3MB line.

I've had suspicions about Time Warner doing this for some time, because if I watch a large amount of youtube videos in a relatively short amount of time the speed for youtube content goes down while the speed remains the same.

Judging by the amount of ISPs having issues with Youtube, I'd say the problem is not with Time Warner.

The thing is if you connect through a VPN, the issue no longer occurs. This is proof that they are throttling YT.

That is not proof. That's simply a different route. There are many ways to get home, only one of them is going to be the fastest.

If i'm in NYC on my Cablevision connection and youtube is slow, but if I connect to my work VPN which has exit IP also in NYC and I connect to the same YouTube IP and it's not slow....

Physical location and proximity have very little correlation with the interconnected mesh of the internet. Just because two hosts on different ISPs are in the same city, building, or even sitting on the same table, doesn't mean traffic between them will be geographically local -- it's typical for traffic to travel hundreds of miles to exchange points to move between networks.

The reason your VPN "fixes" this is simple networking: you are using a different ISP and thus a completely different path.

Except we are not.
Both CV and we are peered to the same AS.

You still don't get it... your. packets. are. not. following. the. same. path.

My packets go from CV directly to YT and from VPN directly to the same YT AS number.
There are no other networks in between.

How do they get from CV to the VPN?

You need the source IP of the video download using WireShark to actually verify this result.

For example when I connect to Youtube and the video starts playing I start downloading from destination IP: 173.194.29.214

NetRange: 173.194.0.0 - 173.194.255.255
CIDR: 173.194.0.0/16
OriginAS: AS15169
NetName: GOOGLE
NetHandle: NET-173-194-0-0-1
Parent: NET-173-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
RegDate: 2009-08-17
Updated: 2012-02-24
Ref: »whois.arin.net/rest/net/ ··· 94-0-0-1

Which means I am directly downloading from Google. I know the address is correct because it's the data connection that's currently live and transmitting the most packets the moment I clicked play on the video.

So to test if your results are correct I would attempt to see from where I am downloading my video from. I am running the IP block so my results are already curved to always use Google servers. However you might be going through a CV video cache server which is causing the issue.

Please verify your results with better proof.

When ice cream sales increase, so do incidents of burglary. This proves that ice cream sales result in burglary.

Do you know that "correlation" is not the same as "causation"?

Then please explain to me why this occurs EVERY DAY at exactly 6pm??

That doesn't prove anything.

People are accusing TWC of throttling YouTube. That implies that they think TWC is actively hampering Youtube connections despite having capacity available.

Using a VPN alters your route. This might bypass a congested route, or cause YouTube to select a different, less congested server that's closer to your VPN host.

Have you run a traceroute to YT? It could be something as obvious as a screwed up node on the internet backbone.

It isn't TWC, but the way Google uses CDNs to get traffic to end users spread across the country and spread over many ISPs. Peering arrangements and rerouting around down circuits cause most of these problems.

most of that stuff is totally transparent to end users or traceroutes.

This is also happening on Comcast Business Class connections. Here at my office YouTube would crawl down to a max of 1.5mbps after 6pm. Before 6pm it would max out our 20mpbs connection. Connecting via a VPN resolves the issue. Throttling is definitely going on.

Ever thought YouTube's CDN providers aren't buying enough bandwidth into Comcast, TWC, FIOS, Cox, and other major ISP networks in some locations? Maybe SOP is that the CDN's usually pay for a set amount of bandwidth (say a GigE) to each ISPs' POP and it just isn't enough bandwidth, but it works well for smaller ISPs and POP links with less traffic. That's not throttling, that's an over-utilized link... in which case they should plan and buy more capacity or change their routing announcements to POP links with less traffic.

That's why changing DNS sometimes works, blocking certain IPs sometimes works, and using VPNs somesomes works. It changes the path to not cross the congested links between the ISP POP and CDN network. It forces traffic to a less congested link. Also in such a situation other video providers wouldn't be affected unless they use the same CDN link. If it were the ISP network, multiple CDNs (Netflix, Vimeo, Amazon, etc.) would be congested or all customers would see issues to specific providers.

Youtube works fine here. Using WOW! and on their 30/5 internet plan.

Same here. Before I switched to WOW!, I had a 24/6 AT&T Uverse connection and had horrible issues with Youtube buffering. It was so bad that I bought a program that opens multiple connections to Youtube to stream a video. Problem went away.

Yep I got tired of the slow buffering on Time Warner, so I switched to WOW and haven't had any problems since.

It could be a case of TWC not peering with YouTube. The ISP that supplies our internet here in NEPA does peer with YouTube & Netflix and we don't seem to have any issues.

What do they prioritize or shape youtube traffic behind? It's a little unfair to ask them if they prioritize or shape youtube traffic at all, but you can still say 'It's not a lie' if you say 'We don't throttle youtube traffic' when it just happens to be at the lowest priority below all other traffic/shaped to be handled the worst. PR's entire job is to twist the connotation of words to make people think they said something they did not.

I had Cox cable for years and with 30/5 connection, never a buffering problem with youtube, now I'm with Verizon FIOS 75/35 and youtube buffers 70% of the time. If I use a VPN, it never buffers, but as other stated, that should not have to be the fix.

I have the 50/25 plan on FiOS and youtube is generally pretty horrible for me. Sometimes I have better luck tethering my laptop to my phone and watching off my LTE connection

At work, I have access to an 40Gbps Internet connection and YouTube videos still buffer. Yes 40 Gigabits per second.

And it is NOT our network! It's just YouTube. Netflix and many other video sites are just fine.

Same problem at home with my 50Mbps Internet connection.

It's been like this though since at least early 2011. So at least two plus years.

I think GOOGLE biases certain youtube videos because they don't have COMMERCIAL sponsors for all content so they discourage it's utilization with poor bandwidth.. this happens with ALL isps.. I think the VPN which has it's own dedicated tier-1 internet ISP proves the point-- because in many cases most streaming websites can PRY into where the data is going down to the geography and isp name so that's how they can bias bandwidth accordingly.

I remember there were times where certain videos were unwatchable.. even nowadays, some video content takes a while to come up and buffer.

The ISP have local cache servers and use varying CDN’s to push out YouTube data. These are all controlled by DNS. You can use just about any of the DNS servers listed here »code.google.com/p/namebench/. Start with the fastest ones and work your way down. Do a speed test on a HD video on YouTube and use the DNS server that is fastest at loading the video. It might be good if users posted the results here also.

Except exactly the same video that is slow on Cablevision in NYC works perfectly fast on Cablevision+VPN in NYC.

I had a problem with Youtube stopping and downloads stopping and it ended up being the autotuning setting. Do this in Windows 7/8 and you may have your problems go away!

click start, type cmd in search, right click on cmd and select run as administrator
then type
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

Blindly repeating "tips" that you found somewhere on the internet without fully understand what they do is not a solution and nobody should follow this tip.

Youtube has been quite stuttery for the last several weeks in Switzerland too, experiencing it both at home and work

TWC is not throttling Youtube and I have yet to see a shred of evidence that they are. Seems BBR has degraded to publishing stories with not 1 shred of proof. I am by no means one to defend TWC. While they are better than Verizon, I still dislike them and their corporate wigs on so many levels. If you want to accuse TWC of something, accuse them of trying to block/throttle VoIP, most likely to protect their own phone service. I have my own packet captures and workarounds that prove this and so do others. This issue is far more important than some congested links as VoIP is a low bandwidth competitive application. Congested links just don't fly, especially with the screen caps of the bandwidth intensive Youtube I am about to attach and some strategic port changes allow me to use my VoIP app on my Android just fine, when calls started suddenly failing and breaking up 1 day and never stopped until I changed ports. Chose to use Google's servers because they allow me to use almost any port, including ones that TWC can't throttle without massive headaches for themselves.

Edit: Adding pictures I just took after posting that clearly show the resolution setting on my laptop and the buffering bar over wifi on my 15/1 TWC package. Now to debunk this rumor started by a punk that clearly has no knowledge of networking and clearly no proof but for blocking certain hosts may have found him a better network path. That kid needs to go back to school! Unless someone wants to claim they are selectively throttled lol.

I've noticed that in the last year or so, YouTube will simply stop buffering if you pause it. I have a DSL connection and sometimes I have to wait an hour for a YouTube video to load so that I can play it back. But since they no longer allow buffering, many YouTube videos are impossible to play.

They load the video a small segment at a time from random urls to avoid caching. Seems a stupid decision by Google, but I feel they quite possibly were forced into it in their new agreements with copyright holders. I would almost put money on it. I did an experiment and found it possible, but not by standard means. It takes patience and a few helped scripts to setup.