US Cable Support > Time Warner Internet Services > Youtube throttled by TWC?

reply to isamu99

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

reply to isamu99
OK I just changed my network settings Configuration to use Google Public DNS, as well as installed The *YousableTubeFix* Greasemonkey script for firefox, and now HD Youtube vids are buffering the way they're supposed to....FOR NOW. Let's see if this really fixed the issue. I'll keep you posted.

P.S. Oh also, it's weird. Sometimes YouTube has that "max buffer ahead" thing going for it. While other times it just buffers all the way to the end. I haven't figured out what determines this behavior.

reply to isamu99
Here’s my experience with YouTube...

Youtube seems to now only buffer a certain number of seconds ahead of playback.

When I switched from TWC 10 to 15 (turbo), it did nothing. YouTube seems to work best at certain (low traffic?) times of the day. Other times, I couldn’t buffer 1080p/780p/(even lower res) fast enough.

When I switched from TWC to RCN 50, YouTube 1080p always buffers faster than playback…ALWAYS.

In another thread some ppl have claimed that it depends a lot on “routing” and/or “caching”. I’m guessing this means that depending on the route your stream comes from, it might hit a YouTube cache where they might temporarily store popular videos to conserve bandwidth. I don’t really know what defines “popular” but perhaps all the vids I’ve tried with RCN so far are all “popular”? :P

I did notice that TWC speedtest pretty much drops down to 1.5-3 practically every day for several hours (regardless of turbo 15). So…I’m not a Flash networking expert and this is only a guess…but maybe TWC servers for some reason increase latency within their system due to load or something, and when this happens YouTube “video segments” are streamed with a lot of lag in between. So it’s equivalent of for example…you load the video, you close the page, you load the video again, and skip to the part where you left off, you close the page…rinse and repeat. So therefore, if you don’t do this fast enough, you will not be able to load the next segments of the stream faster than playback. Make sense?

Good post ras.....I noticed during prime time hours last night('round 8pm PST) the vids didn't buffer all the way while paused. Just like you said, sometimes it has the "max buffer ahead" thing going for it. While other times it just buffers all the way to the end. That's exact what's going on and no one seems to be able to explain why. Switching to that new greasemonkey script and/or changing to google DNS seems to have minor improvement to the buffer performance, but it still seems to happen at random.

reply to rasmasyean

reply to isamu99
Probably why the "serious" video folks, are all
pretty much using Vimeo

Typical HD playback on Vimeo can run full-screen
at a HD quality. Luv It !!!!

reply to socalblitz
Hmmm....why didn't you tell us this EARLIER???

Do you have a link that you can provide to back up this claim?

reply to isamu99
Well for the "max buffer ahead", either the Flash plugin has to stop downloading video or Adobe servers have to stop sending video. Whichever way it happens, Youtube prolly has some sort of load monitor to automate the decision to "stop sending everything because we need bandwidth elsewhere now".

Whatever causes buffer lag, so far I have yet to run into (1080p) buffer lag switching to RCN 50. NEVER. Even through a big playlist. But I don't think the "50 part" has anything to do with it, because it doesn't take that much bandwidth to do 1080p. And when RR measured like 20, Youtube still suffered buffer lag. That's not to say one day I'll get buffer lag for whatever reason while RR wil not. But as of recent times, I think the problem has to do with RR. I mean, I don't think the routing is THAT much different and the videos I watched prolly still come from the same general geography.

reply to isamu99
I have TWC ( 10mbps d/l - 1mbps up ) youtube videos load very slow, on my pc/ipad/asus tf201. ad blocker addons isn't the problem.

I also have AT&T DSL ( 3mbps d/l - 512kbps up ) youtube videos load fast! lets me play 720-1080p without a problem at all times.

I think twc internet is the problem, not a big deal because i don't have any issues downloading torrents/surfing net/online gaming.

weird...

Can you download OnLive gaming on-demand client and try it? I believe you just need to register for a login but you don't have to buy anything. You can just watch other ppl play thier games.

When I had TWC, OnLive always said that the connection wasn't good enough for good performance and it got blurry and pixelated often. I know for a fact it doesn't take the full 10 to work.

When I switched to RCN, there hasn't been a message or a pixelation and blurriness.

reply to excelx

yeah but i still don't understand what's going on because i'm able to stream netflix/hbo go movies on both isp's without any problems.
one thing... i find att dsl to be more of a solid connection for online gaming, low ping.

I have found at least on chrome when I clear cache and hit refresh youtube videos will often load faster even on TWCs DNS servers.
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reply to isamu99
It has very little to do with the ISP, and everything to do with YouTube/Google's content delivery network (CDN). YouTube serves far too much content to try to deliver everything from a central--or even a few--datacenter(s). Therefore, they try to get popular content as close to the user as possible. For many large ISPs, this could even be within the provider's own network. However, the systems themselves are still the Youtube CDN (or contracted out to a third party by Youtube) and not owned/operated by the ISP. I believe that many of the local CDN resources may be oversubscribed, but that's Youtube's fault, not the ISP. That also is why you may see different results on a different provider, but that's still not their fault. Further, not all content is cached locally, so different video(s) can result in different experiences.

It makes it very frustrating when trying to troubleshoot the issue, but you're almost always barking up the wrong tree if you're blaming the ISP.

OK, so basically, You say Youtube loves RCN and ATT, but they hate TWC. OK, perhaps that's possible, granted.

But how do you explain the fact that TWC speeds go down 90% at times on speedtest.net? ...when you choose the "closest" test server!

"Oversubscribed" or not, it's TWC's job to scale the load. Unless you can find evidence of a mass customer switch-over to TWC from other ISP's, rendering everyone else underloaded and bombarding TWC at the same time, I can't find no fault in the ISP. Even if this were the case, that mass switch-over would have happened many months ago by the looks of it...more than enough time for TWC to have scaled their network or find a solution.

reply to isamu99
Is it just me or are things getting a bit better. For the past day or 2 1080P videos seem to be loading at my max speed(30Mbps)

Looks like twc finally stopped throttling youtube streams. Who's to say they won't throttle it again though.