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Lagz
Premium Member
join:2000-09-03
The Rock

Lagz to HelpPlz

Premium Member

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Re: Youtube sucks for me

It seems major ISP's are throttling users!

»Why Is Everyone Having YouTube Streaming Issues? [149] comments

»dd.reddit.com/r/DotA2/co ··· imit=500

»Youtube is slow

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· UADuVM5A

Dennis
Mod
join:2001-01-26
Algonquin, IL

Dennis

Mod

said by Lagz:

It seems major ISP's are throttling users!

I can't speak for any other ISP's but AT&T is not throttling youtube at all. I can't even recreate the problem with my home Uverse line so I'd really appreciate not being accused of that.

NormanS
I gave her time to steal my mind away
MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
TP-Link TD-8616
Asus RT-AC66U B1
Netgear FR114P

NormanS to Lagz

MVM

to Lagz
said by Lagz:

It seems major ISP's are throttling users!

So why does it affect some users, but not others, on the same major ISPs?

And why, among those affected, is it only YouTube, but not Hulu, or Netflix, or others?

If it was the ISPs, it would affect all users. And if the ISP rationale is to throttle streaming content, it would be applied to all streaming services.

Lagz
Premium Member
join:2000-09-03
The Rock

Lagz

Premium Member

said by NormanS:

So why does it affect some users, but not others, on the same major ISPs?

That's the million dollar question. Maybe in some markets they have way oversold from what they can deliver?
said by NormanS:

And why, among those affected, is it only YouTube, but not Hulu, or Netflix, or others?

Youtube is by far and above the most visited site with an astounding amount of traffic. Only Google and Facebook beat youtube in visits and traffic. Netflix nor Hulu are even ranked on anything that I can find.
said by NormanS:

If it was the ISPs, it would affect all users. And if the ISP rationale is to throttle streaming content, it would be applied to all streaming services.

Not necessarily. It would apply to a site or sites that generate the most traffic in markets or areas that have been severely oversold.

NormanS
I gave her time to steal my mind away
MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
TP-Link TD-8616
Asus RT-AC66U B1
Netgear FR114P

NormanS

MVM

A "severely oversold" network would display general congestion symptoms across the board, not just on one streaming network. It would show problems within the provider transit network, not just on the edge, where peering occurs, or beyond, in the CDN transit network.

OTOH, inadequate load balancing at the CDN would easily account for these problems; but be difficult to address as users tweak their hosts files, and such, causing over-correction headaches for the network engineers.

Blame the users? In this case, youbetcha!

Dennis
Mod
join:2001-01-26
Algonquin, IL

Dennis to Lagz

Mod

to Lagz
said by Lagz:

said by NormanS:

So why does it affect some users, but not others, on the same major ISPs?

That's the million dollar question. Maybe in some markets they have way oversold from what they can deliver?
said by NormanS:

And why, among those affected, is it only YouTube, but not Hulu, or Netflix, or others?

Youtube is by far and above the most visited site with an astounding amount of traffic. Only Google and Facebook beat youtube in visits and traffic. Netflix nor Hulu are even ranked on anything that I can find.
said by NormanS:

If it was the ISPs, it would affect all users. And if the ISP rationale is to throttle streaming content, it would be applied to all streaming services.

Not necessarily. It would apply to a site or sites that generate the most traffic in markets or areas that have been severely oversold.

No. That's not how it works. If was a bandwidth saturation or a bottleneck it would impact all services in that market. Granted it would show up on streaming services (video, VoIP, gaming, bit torrent ) but it would show across them all. You wouldn't be able to do a speed test and get 18mb and then turn around and be able to not watch a video at 480p. The internet does not work that way. If it impacted youtube it would impact Hulu unless the issue was much closer to the server than AT&T (ie the CDN servers they use).
DNSguy
join:2006-04-09
Saint Charles, MO

DNSguy to Lagz

Member

to Lagz
said by Lagz:

said by NormanS:

And why, among those affected, is it only YouTube, but not Hulu, or Netflix, or others?

Youtube is by far and above the most visited site with an astounding amount of traffic. Only Google and Facebook beat youtube in visits and traffic. Netflix nor Hulu are even ranked on anything that I can find.

Really? You could not find a ranking for Netflix?

Netflix gobbles a third of peak Internet traffic in North America

"Audio and video streaming account for 65% of all downstream traffic from 9pm-12am and half of that is Netflix traffic [on North America fixed networks]."
Frodo
join:2006-05-05

Frodo to NormanS

Member

to NormanS
said by NormanS:

So why does it affect some users, but not others, on the same major ISPs?

I wonder if the DNS servers have something to do with it. It seems that some Uverse customers are on IPv6 servers (so I hear):
99.99.99.53 & 99.99.99.153
I'm on these two:
68.94.156.1 & 68.94.157.1

I hear that Akamai uses DNS to map users to the nearest server. Maybe Youtube does that too. If the DNS server theory was correct, that would explain some users and not others.

TestBoy
Premium Member
join:2009-10-13
Irmo, SC

TestBoy

Premium Member

My DNS servers are also 68.94.156.1 and 157.1
I have played around with using other DNS servers and that never made any real difference for me.
Jester236
join:2013-02-26

Jester236

Member

I have the exact same DNS as you do, permanetly set via my gateway. Looks like this could be a factor in all this. Blocking those IP's does seem to still be working for me so i'm starting to get a little more confident about it.

Dennis
Mod
join:2001-01-26
Algonquin, IL

Dennis

Mod

If blocking those IP's has a positive impact on performance than that means DNS is not a factor. Most likely you are just now bypassing over-saturated links.

JDThird
@sbcglobal.net

JDThird

Anon

I just changed from Roadrunner to Uverse less than a month ago. I had instant problems with streaming videos embedded in any website - youtube, geeksaresexy.net, whatever. Found out in my case it was because I already had a complex network at home before AT&T, so when they came in I didn't want to change my 10.x.x.x address range (since I do a lot of VPN work to clients I don't want overlapping IP's) and kept myself behind my firewall, which was behind their device. Even with the "firewall behind a firewall" setting that the tech enabled when he installed, it was a problem for streaming. I tested by turning on the AT&T wireless I had him keep disabled, and my Macbook pro suddenly could stream what it couldn't when behind the double NAT. I had to bite the bullet and change my network scheme to an "acceptable" one from AT&T since the uverse device doesn't allow the private 10. range on the LAN port. But once I put everything behind the AT&T device and not behind my own firewall as well, my problem went away. Certainly not the case for everyone's problem, but if anyone out there has a double NAT for outbound like I did, worth checking out in case it's impacting you... now if I could just get the Uverse internet to not drop a signal randomly during large file downloads... I lose internet AND tv signal every 10 or so minutes for 30 seconds or so when I'm downloading a large file...

Just glad I'm still in the trial portion since if this doesn't get resolved I can at least cancel Uverse without any penalty...