Topic 'Youtube throttled by TWC?' in forum 'Time Warner Internet Services' - dslreports.com

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:46:33 EDT

anon posted : FYI, I went through that "HTML5" theory already last time. It didn't make jack difference for me.

It just looked worst beause HTML5 can't be full screened.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:00:35 EDT

DrStrangLov posted :

said by poopiepants:

youtube is horrendus for me no matter what I try to do to make it better.. it really blows.

Youtube presents video in two formats:

1. Adobe Flash Player

2. HTML5 Video Player

If there ain't no commercial content, one can see a video in HTML5 Video Player if enabled via this Youtube site: »www.youtube.com/html5/

Adobe Flash content tends to be throttled in steps, but when watching via HTML5, Youtube can feed it as fast as you can suck it up.

PS: Previous thread: »[TWC] Problems with Youtube?

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 08:32:08 EDT

anon posted :

said by DelmarPip:

was talking bout mse not the IE browser i only use IE for improtant stuff like banking or buying stuff

Oh phht...I guess sometimes we distort what we read based on prejudices. :P

You're talking about the virus scanner? I have that too, and it doesn't effect youtube. I mean, unless it effects it when it runs? But I never noticed anything with a core i7. But if it did, it would effect all the other apps too.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 00:28:35 EDT

DelmarPip posted : was talking bout mse not the IE browser i only use IE for improtant stuff like banking or buying stuff

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 00:14:42 EDT

anon posted :

said by DelmarPip:

i heard microsoft mse slows down youtube videos alot

That's only if you have a real crappy computer that can't handle IE and Flash at the same time. You would get the same effect with FireFox with a lot of plugins. It's just that IE has a lot of stuff built-in.

Chrome says it "fastest". But in a modern computer (not netbook), it makes no noticable difference.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 00:09:22 EDT

anon posted :

said by DelmarPip:

i heard microsoft mse slows down youtube videos alot

Oh yeah, also...Flash slowing down processing in a weak computer has nothing to do with the speed of download.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 18:20:24 EDT

DelmarPip posted : i heard microsoft mse slows down youtube videos alot

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:49:52 EDT

SIOYGYG posted : try swapping the modem out for a new if your running an old one the connection will be unstable

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:20:23 EDT

poopiepants posted : youtube is horrendus for me no matter what I try to do to make it better.. it really blows.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:28:50 EDT

anon posted :

said by pxwoo:

It's not TW that throttles.

Open a random HD video (one that isn't featured on the front page etc)

Turn on HD then right click in the video and click "Show video info"

Watch this line: HTTPVideoPlayer, HTTP, 0 kbps
(for me it will generally jump between 0-2000kbps) (mostly 0)

Right click inside the player again and click "Take speed test"

Near the bottom of the speed test page click: Show Test Video

A video appears, set to HD and "Show video info" again

Watch how youtube's own video maxes your connection 99% of the time.

HTTPVideoPlayer, HTTP, 49943 kbps

OK, I dunno what is “featured”, but here are actual tests for me via RCN. Which video you use so we’re on the same page?

It’s weird because there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between “popularity” and “throttle”.

400k hits:

»www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HJoNXWW···ure=plcp
24mil hits:

»www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjpOzsQ···ure=plcp
49000-50000 kbps

10mil hits:

»www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSLPH9d-···ure=plcp
10000-30000 kbps

Google Test Video
10000-39000 kbps

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:21:19 EDT

ke4pym posted :

said by pxwoo:

This seems to work for the test video. But when I go back to random 1080p clips, I'm back to around 170kbps. The test video? SLAMs my internet connection. Wish the other videos would do this.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:35:56 EDT

pxwoo posted : It's not TW that throttles.

Open a random HD video (one that isn't featured on the front page etc)

Turn on HD then right click in the video and click "Show video info"

Watch this line: HTTPVideoPlayer, HTTP, 0 kbps
(for me it will generally jump between 0-2000kbps) (mostly 0)

Right click inside the player again and click "Take speed test"

Near the bottom of the speed test page click: Show Test Video

A video appears, set to HD and "Show video info" again

Watch how youtube's own video maxes your connection 99% of the time.

HTTPVideoPlayer, HTTP, 49943 kbps

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 03:21:17 EDT

Smith6612 posted : Let's not forget, Olympics are also over with. Less streaming they have to put up with at once during peak hours.

Expect it to get bad during the winter months though. It's pretty routine for YouTube.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 22:44:15 EDT

Aaron M posted : Maybe with school right around the corner parents are cracking down on their kid's computer time. Youtube has been much much better this past week.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 22:25:27 EDT

DrDrew posted :

said by maybe :

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

Who says they throttled it in the first place and WHY would TWC go after YouTube and not others like NetFlix, Vimeo, or Amazon video? Why would they throttle in some areas and not others?

How do you explain YouTube having similar issues on other ISPs, including FIOS, U-Verse, Comcast, Charter, Cablevision, Cox?

How can you tell this is throttling and simply not a congestion issue because YouTube isn't buying enough bandwidth?
--
If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:21:22 EDT

anon posted : maybe i spoke too soon. lagging again.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:07:41 EDT

ke4pym posted :

said by maybe :

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

Dunno about you, but I have 30/5 connection (and it tests out consistently with SamKnows) and an 8 core MacPro with nVidia video and Youtube streams still suck hairy donkey butt.

It's unusable this evening here. Rest of the web is just fine.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:38:24 EDT

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

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:11:54 EDT

Aaron M posted : 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)

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:45:39 EDT

DrDrew posted :

said by rasmasyean :

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

It's not that YouTube hates either one, it's a capacity issue.

Say YouTube has a direct CDN connection in New York to ATT, it's 10Gb, and it uses 8Gb at peak. Say YouTube also has a 10Gb connection in New York to TWC and it uses 14 Gb at peak (obviously they're bottlenecked at 10Gb). There's a capacity issue there, but it's up to YouTube to buy more capacity from TWC. It's not particularly TWCs job to force YouTube to buy more capacity.

If you switch to another provider the problem looks fixed. If you switch to a different CDN server it looks fixed. If you use something other than YouTube you don't have a problem.

This sort of situation is common with YouTube across the more popular ISPs in major markets.
--
If it's important, back it up... twice. Even 99.999% availability isn't enough sometimes.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:10:09 EDT

anon posted : 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 12:27:22 EDT

PrymeMover posted : 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:05:14 EDT

CptGemini posted : 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.
--
»www.akaskriller.com - Your ultimate source for all android needs.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 03:40:03 EDT

excelx posted : 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 01:29:44 EDT

isamu99 posted :

said by excelx:

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...

Very interesting.....

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:02:11 EDT

anon posted : 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 07:38:07 EDT

excelx posted : 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...

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:09:55 EDT

anon posted : 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 03:06:09 EDT

isamu99 posted : Hmmm....why didn't you tell us this EARLIER???

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

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 22:35:56 EDT

ChilledCat posted : 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 !!!!

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:28:05 EDT

socalblitz posted :

said by rasmasyean :

Here’s my experience with YouTube...

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

YouTube changed the way they stream video a couple of months ago.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 09:34:19 EDT

isamu99 posted : 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 09:52:11 EDT

anon posted : 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?

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 09:08:12 EDT

anon 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 05:54:53 EDT

isamu99 posted : 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.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 05:13:30 EDT

isamu99 posted : Yeah it could be on youtube's end. I'm gonna download Greasemonkey for firefox and grab one of those scripts and see what happens. Someone mentioned raising your DNS speed or something? How exactly do I do this?

Also what are some other good scripts?

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 20:07:37 EDT

Smith6612 posted : Here's a screenshot from my day time connection pulling down the same video from YouTube. To wrap up Hob's question as to why I put up with 20KB/s often, this is why. Once decent connectivity shows up I'll be grabbing such speeds at home and making good use of it.

So there's my proof that YouTube doesn't throttle on the HD videos :)

But that should wrap up my (unintentional) thread jacking since I'm not being of too much help.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 02:00:22 EDT

Anonymous_ posted : 75% to 80% CPU usage when Forced full CPU speed & overclocked to 2.7GHz T9300 and with the &wmode=direct tag used

70% to 85% tag not used when load and playing

the CPU usage did drop to 65% when it was done downloading

usage on the 9600m GS was 40% no tag (2.53 P8700)

Something I noticed is SOME computers have issues with buffering. no matter what the specs of the computer

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 01:46:49 EDT

Anonymous_ posted :

said by Smith6612:

Ah, ok. So you're speaking of the chipset and not the GPU itself.

I've attached a screenshot of what StageVideo does. This video's in 720p running on one of our desktop which runs Windows Vista and an Intel Q6600 as the CPU with a Radeon HD 5770 as the GPU. There are other YouTube videos loaded in the background, but there's my CPU usage during playback.

Intel 82GM965 Graphics and Memory Controller

according the intel's documents it's x3100 IGP controller.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:34:41 EDT

Smith6612 posted : Ah, ok. So you're speaking of the chipset and not the GPU itself.

I've attached a screenshot of what StageVideo does. This video's in 720p running on one of our desktop which runs Windows Vista and an Intel Q6600 as the CPU with a Radeon HD 5770 as the GPU. There are other YouTube videos loaded in the background, but there's my CPU usage during playback.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:18:14 EDT

Anonymous_ posted : 965 Express is x3100

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:11:41 EDT

Smith6612 posted : Ah, ok. The 965 won't get you too far with acceleration of video. Pretty basic card. The GeForce cards however should be able to take the heavy workloads off of the CPU, no problem.

With YouTube try &wmode=direct in the URL which turns on Stagevideo if you've got updated Flash and drivers. The YousableTubeFix Greasemoneky script, which is one I use can also force it on if it can even be done.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:09:15 EDT

Anonymous_ posted : this laptop 965Express

My other two laptop has
Geforce 9600M-GS Vostro 1720 1920x1200
and
Geforce 8600M-GT Vostro 1500 1200 x 800

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:04:07 EDT

Smith6612 posted :

said by Anonymous_:

Also if the user is using HTML5 video player he/she will need a 8core+ system to run 1080p smoothly.

My laptop is 2.7GHz Core2 6MB L2 overclocked from 2.5GHz
4GB ram
windows 7HP
only using a IGP but it's only 1200 x 800 14" screen

HTML5 is where I can see the exception here. Yeah, video acceleration for the players need some work still. 1080p should work fine on a 3-core CPU though, assuming one CPU is busy with handling network overhead and the OS, and the other two cores are taking care of decoding the video. 8 cores sounds like what would happen with the Original format.

Which IGP does your laptop have? If it's an Intel 4500MHD (GM45/x4500) or newer, an ATi Mobility Radeon HD 4 series or higher, or a GeForce 8M series or higher, those cards can do H.264 decoding and can almost completely eliminate the CPU usage from Flash. Make sure Hardware Acceleration is on within Flash, you have the latest GPU drivers from the manufacturer of the GPU (not the PC maker unless it's dual/switchable graphics) and enable Stagevideo if YouTube's player won't turn it on using a userscript. Won't help too much with the HTML5 players though, those still need CPU.

The older GPUs such as x3100s from Intel, NVIDIA GeForce 7 series and ATi Radeon HD 3 series and older, while they can do some H.264 acceleration and other methods of accelerating HD video, they aren't quite as effective.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:59:52 EDT

Anonymous_ posted : Also if the user is using HTML5 video player he/she will need a 8core+ system to run 1080p smoothly.

My laptop is 2.7GHz Core2 6MB L2 overclocked from 2.5GHz
4GB ram
windows 7HP
only using a IGP but it's only 1200 x 800 14" screen

In general Wifi cards use more resources then regular NIc's

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:49:19 EDT

Smith6612 posted : Core2Duos still cut it if you have a halfway decent GPU and a tuned up machine. Unless it's a very low end Core2Duo or one meant for a netbook/ultrabook it shouldn't have a problem handling a couple hundred megabits flying in, provided some time has been spent to reduce the amount of interrupts to the CPU and other processing overhead that causes smaller amounts of traffic to peg the CPU. The YouTube player on busy 1080p videos can consume 2% of a Core2Quad or 8% of a Core2Duo or less if you set up Stagevideo on a halfway decent GPU.

My desktop is a custom built machine I pieced together myself. i7-920 overclocked to 4.2Ghz, 16GB RAM (no swap) and 3-way SLi and it's used for gaming, general use and distributed computing projects. 1080p videos are almost completely decoded on the GPUs, and Flash sits there consuming no more than 2% of the total CPU time during 1080p video playback. Original will consume a CPU core but the GPUs will handle that without a problem.

My work computer runs a 2.53Ghz Core2Duo, and this machine is attached to a Gigabit port. Downloading at Gigabit speeds will peg the CPU at 100% and grind the hard disks down but YouTube will still play at 30FPS since the GPU is halfway decent and I've spent some time optimizing the machine. I may rebuild this machine to i5/i7, depending on what is laying around but it handles it just fine.

I'm not sure why your Core2Duo machine would load videos slowly though. Seems like something it should handle without a problem.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:39:51 EDT

Anonymous_ posted : If it's loading slow for them they need to upgrade the computer

Even a Core2 does not cut it anymore
They also load slow for me also on my Core2 system

Flash player HD video uses up a lot of CPU resources. As well as the Wireless NIC upto 40% CPU usage by it self each core.
I have 4GB of ram installed on this system

also the User needs to make sure he or she is not use HTML5.

I recommend at lest 6-8 core or higher HTML5 has no GPU offload

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:32:16 EDT

Smith6612 posted : YouTube does throttle as I might have mentioned on the previous page. Pop to 360p/240p and see what happens. They don't throttle on the HD videos. Their Flash player the last I checked would stop buffering videos if you paused the video once the buffer got to a certain point which is what I mentioned on the last page and needs a script to bypass unless Google did away with that. Raw downloads from YouTube are not affected by this.

I also know Time Warner doesn't throttle YouTube. I don't use them but I have many people who I help on a day to day basis who uses them and they don't do lowly things such as that.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:29:13 EDT

Anonymous_ posted : yes but your claiming youtube is throttled by TWC which is not true.

Re: Youtube throttled by TWC?

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:27:07 EDT

Smith6612 posted :

said by Anonymous_:

proves what you say is not true.

A cool 3.5MB/s :uhh:

Your connection is also significantly faster than my home connection. My daytime connection will pull down that video in no time (under two minutes if even that).

I'm waiting for some things to fall in place before some better connectivity is installed here. I won't upgrade for the time being from what I've got until then.