Verizon FiOS → Horrible youtube speeds

Ive seen improvement in Bayonne but it went from completely horrible to barely acceptable. Prior to blocking the IP ranges it was basically unusable, since its usable but just barely.

I'm in NJ and I have been experiencing the same thing for the past two weeks. It takes over two minutes to buffer a 30 second video at 240p. Blocking those IPs with the firewall didn't make any noticeable difference. This is unacceptable, and yet Verizon still has no comment?

I guess it's not surprising being that Verizon is still routing traffic from NJ which is destined for Comcast in NJ through Chicago and Canada, even after 8 months. (Traffic destined for Comcast in Philadelphia routes fine through NYC.) What incompetent buffoons.

It's useless right now.

After being horrible last night(Thursday), youtube videos played okay tonight.

I will continue to monitor the situation daily.

Huh?
DNS has nothing to do with "routing".
DNS resolves IP addresses with domain names. There is no need to use VZ DNS servers unless you want to allow Verizon to send you to whatever pages they want you to see.

Please switch to Comcast then!

Look at the post right above this one. The problem isn't FiOS, it's Google.

For what it's worth -
I tried the fixes on my Fios Actiontec router, and it seems to have greatly improved my Youtube streaming. Much faster now, pauses/lags at a very minimum so far...

Youtube streaming great today. In fact, it is the best I have seen it in a long time(maybe its the weekend and thus, less congestion). When I click on a clip, it downloads/buffers the entire clip within a few seconds and thus, I have no hiccups playing any clip.

I have a slight problem however ever since I updated the settings in my Actiontech Router based on the ip range in this thread. When I use the Actiontech Router's wireless signal with my laptop and roku box(connected wirelessly), everything plays okay. However, with my 50/25 FIOS connection, my speedtests on my laptop is cut in half I guess due to the Actiontech being wireless G.

Whenever I turned off the wireless setting in the Actiontech Router and use my Trendnet WAP(wireless N), I get full download speeds(50/25) on my laptop. However, my Roku box cannot connect anymore to my Trendnet's wireless signal even though it connects fine with my laptop.

My roku box worked fine before with my Trendnet WAP before I blocked the IP range within the Actiontech Router.

Any suggestions for a fix?

go into your trendnet setting and change it to channel 1, and then try to connect with roku, if it doesn't connect, try channel 6, try to connect, and channel 11 and try to connect.

90+ % of the time it's a wireless channel if you are using 100% correct trendnet essid and wpa2 settings.

I went into the trendnet and tried the different channels(1, 6, 11) and it still didn't work. I spoke with Trendnet technical support and he didn't have any other suggestions for me other than contacting Roku directly. Not sure I want to do that because I hear Roku's customer support is bad.

For now, I hooked up my Netgear Powerline adapter to my Actiontech Router and my Roku box and it connected okay.

This is the same with CNN videos for me ... constant studdering

Thats new. Everybody else only has youtube issues.

So I spent like 5-10 minutes trying to get a video to stream by reloading and changing resolutions... nothing.. I tether computer to my Verizon 4G phone and BOOM, HD streams across no problems.. It is DEFINITELY a FIOS issue (Maybe they need to ditch alter?).

Did you try any of the fixes mentioned in this thread. I did and youtube now streams great on my laptop and on my roku box. All in wonderful HD with no buffering.

New Gen3 Router arrived - hooked up. Tried base settings and DNS changes and even the Firewall solution:

Base Settings - Hulu and HBOGO streamed great, and even a few YouTube videos at 720p and 1080p buffered great.

DNS Changes - OpenDNS and Google DNS resulted in slightly better results of streaming from all sites, no noticeable difference with YouTube

Firewall Changes - Noticeable difference with YouTube, but not on all videos. Seems sporadic based on what video it is.

Don't forget what time of day it is. Traffic demand isn't as high at 10am compared to 8-midnight.

Not necessarily. Your answer assumes a DNS server is a simple database; the same query always yields the same result(s). Many DNS servers work that way, but they don't have to. Just as long as the server follows the DNS protocols, it is free to give any answer it wishes to queries. In the case of large-scale operations like Facebook or YouTube, often the DNS server wishes to respond with AAAA or A RRs which, network-wise, are closest to the client. So for example, if I use OpenDNS's servers, their servers are simply going to forward the query along to one of ns1 - ns4 .google.com. The key difference is the source IP address will be of OpenDNS's servers, not your address. The answer may be optimized for OpenDNS's network, but not your slice of the Internet. So let's say just for the sake of argument you're in NYC and OpenDNS's servers are in LA. The answer back from ns1.google.com may assume you're on the west coast and hand out an address of a content delivery server close to LA. Then you'll be sucking the content clear across the US and be slow, when instead there's probably a duplicate content delivery server right in your own city and be zippy as all get out.

Depending on how YouTube's DNS programming goes, using Verizon's DNS servers in that case might be optimal. It may be even more optimal if you run your own recursive, caching DNS server. Then all the queries will have a source address of you and not Verizon's DNS servers.

720p videos stall on fios while it's blazing fast on Verizon LTE.

Same experience here as posted above... I NEVER at any time have any issues with 480, 720 or 1080p when I tether 4G to laptop.. I switch back to FIOS and it will be sporadic and not even stream 240p on random videos at random times of the day/night.

I'm noticing this issue as well. Youtube works great over my Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel. I captured some traceroutes for some of the servers I had trouble with:

[2.1-BETA0][root@pfsense]/root(1): traceroute r19---sn-p5qlsm7d.c.youtube.com
traceroute to r19.sn-p5qlsm7d.c.youtube.com (208.117.251.184), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 L100.HRBGPA-VFTTP-12.verizon-gni.net (98.117.0.1) 1.222 ms 1.348 ms 0.834 ms
2 G10-0-8-112.HRBGPA-LCR-01.verizon-gni.net (130.81.184.148) 2.839 ms 2.589 ms 2.443 ms
3 P12-0-0.HRBGPA-LCR-02.verizon-gni.net (130.81.27.185) 14.880 ms 14.614 ms 14.698 ms
4 so-12-1-0-0.RES-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net (130.81.28.254) 14.647 ms 14.696 ms 14.552 ms
5 0.xe-3-1-1.BR1.IAD8.ALTER.NET (152.63.37.141) 15.027 ms 15.004 ms 15.064 ms
6 te9-2-0d0.cir1.ashburn-va.us.xo.net (206.111.0.201) 38.517 ms 36.033 ms 34.816 ms
7 216.156.8.189.ptr.us.xo.net (216.156.8.189) 31.958 ms 30.994 ms 29.194 ms
8 209.48.42.86 (209.48.42.86) 124.931 ms 126.117 ms 124.303 ms
9 208.117.251.184 (208.117.251.184) 26.483 ms 27.792 ms 27.974 ms

[2.1-BETA0][root@pfsense]/root(2): traceroute r15---sn-p5qlsm76.c.youtube.com
traceroute to r15.sn-p5qlsm76.c.youtube.com (208.117.251.148), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 L100.HRBGPA-VFTTP-12.verizon-gni.net (98.117.0.1) 1.077 ms 0.863 ms 0.968 ms
2 G10-0-8-112.HRBGPA-LCR-01.verizon-gni.net (130.81.184.148) 2.429 ms 2.265 ms 2.456 ms
3 P12-0-0.HRBGPA-LCR-02.verizon-gni.net (130.81.27.185) 14.788 ms 14.666 ms 14.643 ms
4 so-12-1-0-0.RES-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net (130.81.28.254) 14.591 ms 14.479 ms 16.041 ms
5 0.xe-10-0-0.BR2.IAD8.ALTER.NET (152.63.38.165) 15.007 ms 15.109 ms 14.975 ms
6 144.232.8.209 (144.232.8.209) 187.038 ms 115.363 ms 117.669 ms
7 sl-st31-ash-0-4-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.28.6) 116.263 ms
sl-st31-ash-0-8-0-2.sprintlink.net (144.232.1.19) 116.491 ms
sl-st31-ash-0-4-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.28.6) 116.934 ms
8 sl-googl10-584821-0.sprintlink.net (144.228.205.34) 122.521 ms 122.780 ms 121.535 ms
9 208.117.251.148 (208.117.251.148) 33.669 ms 37.652 ms 38.478 ms

[2.1-BETA0][root@pfsense]/root(6): traceroute r10---sn-p5qlsm7l.c.youtube.com
traceroute to r10.sn-p5qlsm7l.c.youtube.com (208.117.251.47), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 L100.HRBGPA-VFTTP-12.verizon-gni.net (98.117.0.1) 1.159 ms 0.831 ms 0.806 ms
2 G9-0-4-212.HRBGPA-LCR-02.verizon-gni.net (130.81.139.126) 2.396 ms 2.435 ms 2.167 ms
3 so-12-1-0-0.RES-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net (130.81.28.254) 14.497 ms 14.767 ms 14.695 ms
4 0.xe-11-0-0.BR2.IAD8.ALTER.NET (152.63.38.169) 15.001 ms 15.074 ms 15.024 ms
5 144.232.8.209 (144.232.8.209) 118.582 ms 116.717 ms 113.669 ms
6 sl-st31-ash-0-4-0-3.sprintlink.net (144.232.3.169) 114.433 ms 117.698 ms
sl-st31-ash-0-4-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.28.6) 115.981 ms
7 sl-googl10-584821-0.sprintlink.net (144.228.205.34) 123.912 ms 124.402 ms 125.384 ms
8 208.117.251.47 (208.117.251.47) 30.591 ms 30.676 ms 29.528 ms

In the first traceroute, it seems the connection gets slow around the XO hop. The other two traceroutes slow down around the Sprint hops.

Time for a deep-dive. I looked at a research paper online where students examined the cache-server-selection process used by Youtube. Here's an excerpt from it. I think we're looking at the tip of an iceberg:

--------------
Primary cache servers follow the naming convention, v[1-24].lscache[1-8].c.youtube.com. From the example, you can see that there are 24 X 8 = 192 possible hostnames. Then, for example, the first iteration, or v1.lscache1.c.youtube.com maps to ~75 different Address Records in DNS, depending on time-of-day, and location of the querying IP.
--------------

It appears that there are variables at play here, that are difficult to control, if we're going to try to 'fool the system'. This is from a paper, "Where Do You "Tube"? Uncovering YouTube Server Selection Strategy", written by some students at the U. of Minnesota.

Youtube seems to be working fine today, probably just because its the weekend.

Same for me as well. Even though I did the "IP Block" sometime ago, it is still not perfect. Somedays it is good. Other days it is not. Weekends never seem to be a problem however. Less people watching youtube on the weekends I guess.

I have the same experience as well. Never had a problem watching youtube videos on my Verizon 4G LTE phone.

I guess Verizon Wireless uses different google servers.

I am getting similar problems with all streamed media. Buffers up to a point then stops. Then there are the dropped frames/stuttering video on Amazon. VHO8

Same here. Im just glad youtube is usable now as opposed to before.

FiOS is so damn frustrating sometimes. They are 95% perfect, but that 5% is a source of untold annoyance. Pathetic YouTube speeds and the Actiontec brand routers still sucking after 7+ years are two of the big ones. Bleh!

Youtube was slow as molasses today no matter which quality is selected. It could barely hit 30Kb/s.