US Cable Support > Time Warner Internet Services > Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!

Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!

said by Connor Babel :

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go here and read the top comment if you have windows 7 »www.reddit.com/r/technology/comm···youtube/
ps. the thread on reddit is named for time warner but it works with any ISP from my experience

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quote:

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His Windows guide has you use the Adv Firewall UI instead of netsh which is about 2000 steps too many.

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="YoutubeHTTP1" protocol=TCP localport=80 action=block dir=IN remoteip=173.194.55.0/24

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="YoutubeHTTP2" protocol=TCP localport=80 action=block dir=IN remoteip=206.111.0.0/16

Enjoy. The incredible thing is now I'm not even seeing any delay when switching to 1080p, I used to see a complete refresh and then a pause.

PS; if you're on XP you'll need to edit the command as they renamed firewall to advfirewall later on (Vista I believe).

Edit: People keep asking how to them remove in case something breaks.. Simple,

netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=YoutubeHTTP1

netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=YoutubeHTTP2

And an image to show you what you're actually doing- »i.imgur.com/wSoiAe2.png

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What if i dont run windows firewall at all?
I have the sbg6580 modem/router from time warner,how do i input this into my router settings and where?

reply to isamu99

I doubt that was the case. I was having buffering problems until I applied the fix.

To the other poster....you don't put those settings in your router, you type them in windows cmd prompt. whether you're using windows firewall or not is irrelevant. try it.

I was addressing the second part of my post to SyphonBW.

reply to isamu99
Umm, I think you're wrong isamu99. If you're not using Windows Firewall, then this won't work.

You *CAN* put these settings in your router if you want. Just add firewall rules to block traffic to those IP blocks, and then the fix is applied to your entire network.

reply to isamu99
I don't even see where you could put these settings in SBG6580 admin cp?

Same Here

reply to isamu99
It seems more likely settings for your firewall than router. I still can't find out how in my firewall software.

reply to Nick21

reply to isamu99
Note: I am not a TWC customer.

What's being proposed in that Reddit thread, and in the reference materials that thread cites (some random blog, and that blog cites some random Youtube video), is dangerous on numerous levels. There's a very strong indication that the authors involved do not understand networking, and/or the implications of their ""solution"".

The proposed ""solution"", at the firewall level, does the following:

1. Drop any TCP packet destined to an IP within the 173.194.55.0/24 netblock, with a TCP destination port of 80
2. Drop any TCP packet destined to an IP within the 206.111.0.0/16 netblock, with a TCP destination port of 80

To date, not a single person has provided actual packet captures providing that TWC is doing some kind of HTTP redirection which causes your client to fetch content from alternate locations (e.g. content hosted within the 173.194.55.0/24 or 206.111.0.0/16 netblocks -- BTW, those are, respectively, Google and XO Communications -- and in the case of the former, Google advertises 173.194.0.0/16 via BGP on the Internet).

TWC can't be doing reverse-proxying because otherwise said ""solution"" wouldn't work; they would have to be, for example, looking for very specific HTTP headers and GET requests and injecting an HTTP Location: header into the response, to force the browser to fetch content from an alternate location. If it was done via reverse-proxying (e.g. transparently), the above ""solution"" would not work, since it's being done on the workstation itself.

I suppose an alternate model/method they could be using is wildcard DNS matching (e.g. return IPs within the above netblocks when folks look up very specific FQDNs for c.youtube.com content -- normally they're very strange FQDNs such as r9---sn-nwj7knel.c.youtube.com), in which case using an alternate DNS provider (e.g. OpenDNS) should, unless they're doing transparent DNS response injection, accomplish the same thing. However, in the below referenced video, the author claims "changing DNS providers did nothing".

I can talk at extreme length about this whole ordeal and what it actually amounts to at a networking level, but it's all speculative because nobody has provided actual evidence of what's going on; the Youtube video that mitchribar.com mentions as "proof" is not a proper analysis of any sort.

Packet captures of all HTTP and DNS traffic when visiting Youtube and watching a video need to be provided -- and preferably with ipconfig /flushdns being done beforehand.

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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

reply to isamu99
I had to Telnet into my router to test the blocks. I tried "reject" and "drop" but it made no difference. Videos would fail to start, take way to long to start or get hung up on the ads that play before the videos.
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Usenet Block Accounts | Unlimited Accounts

It Works!!!

Also. I don't have any issues with buffering while using ZoneAlarm firewall. Only with Windows firewall.

reply to koitsu

I don't want "something" -- I want a proper packet capture of all traffic from someone on TWC who can confirm that the aforementioned ""solution"" works for them (and I want the capture to be when such ""solutions"" are not in place). I want an actual raw capture, not "logging lines", because every packet and its headers (particularly the payload portion) need to be examined.

The pcap filter rule I'd recommend using is (tcp and port 80) or (udp and port 53). This will capture HTTP and DNS traffic only. I would suggest closing down all other applications (including anything running in the systray) before doing this.

I would also appreciate this be done by someone who is not behind a router (unless their router is running a Linux equivalent and they can use tcpdump to capture traffic out the WAN interface), i.e. directly connected.

Please keep a clock running on your computer doing the captures, and make note of what times/etc. you do certain things -- it might be easier to just click an existing Youtube video URL that starts with http://.

Finally remember that visiting http://www.youtube.com/ will redirect you to https://www.youtube.com/ (Google does that), and subsequent videos shown via that would be streamed via HTTPS (SSL) and not HTTP (the above pcap filter will not match HTTPS traffic); I don't see how TWC could be doing any kind of redirection or injection if HTTPS is used, as that would indicate a MITM attack and certificate verifications would fail.

--
Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer.

reply to koitsu