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Decko37
join:2013-03-28
Goldsboro, NC

Decko37

Member

Throttling connection to specific web sites?

Just wondering if there's a way to check and see if my connection is being throttled to certain websites? One in particular being twitch.tv, for some reason any time I try to watch a stream in any quality higher than 480p I get a lot of buffering, stuttering and just overall lag. I know many other people who have no problem viewing streams perfectly in 720p/1080p. I have no problem viewing VOD or streamed content from any other page in 1080p quality (even loading more than one at a time). I know it's not a bandwidth issue because I get a solid 45-50Mb down/4-5Mb up

FWIW - I have tried the IP blocking via windows firewall suggested in other threads. Running W7 64bit, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Intel i7. Motorola SB6121 Modem to a Linksys E4200 to my laptop via CAT6.

Packeteers
Premium Member
join:2005-06-18
Forest Hills, NY
Asus RT-AC3100
(Software) Asuswrt-Merlin

4 edits

Packeteers

Premium Member

try this; »free VPN from/to anywhere for non-p2p/torrent traffic

us any high speed low user count volunteer host outlet in a nearby local that uses a different ISP (you may be able to determine this by comparing the geolocation of the outlet with an ISP coverage map) that should circumvent TWC altogether, and allow you to see if above 480p is possible to your connection.

i have notice from here in NYC that TWC poorly routes many of my connections. i have documented it, and complained about it, but there really is not much we can do to convince them. so inefficient routing may be to blame for your over 480p problems, not throttling. tier-1 tech are clueless beyond the first 4 hops, and tier-3 techs are very difficult to talk to.

you should still document your displeasure with the streaming company's own tech support, as they may be accumulating enough complaints about your ISP in your area to compile data and a pattern of bad performance till they themselves complain to the ISP on you and your fellow area twitch.tv users behalf.
coolcat120
join:2007-04-13

coolcat120 to Decko37

Member

to Decko37
Having the same issues here. Cannot watch and streams with 720/1080 without buffering. Also having TWC with 30/5 speeds. Funny thing it was only YouTube being throttled for a while and now its twitch.
nickneutron
join:2012-01-11

nickneutron

Member

it is a known fact that TW throttles/redirects users to cache servers.

»www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/c ··· ottling/
andy4theherd
join:2012-12-02
Ashland, KY

andy4theherd

Member

same problem here.

i just switched to TWC from Windstream DSL a few months ago. i never had a problem watching 720+ streams on Twitch with a 12Mbps DSL connection. with 20/1 TWC i get constant buffering regardless of the time of day. everything else works perfectly...

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu to nickneutron

MVM

to nickneutron
said by nickneutron:

it is a known fact that TW throttles/redirects users to cache servers.

»www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/c ··· ottling/

This has yet to be proven. Nobody who has networking knowledge has been able to provide hard evidence of this. Want verification for my claims? Here you go:

»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!
»Re: Heads up guys....new trick to eliminate Youtube throttling!

A person who was providing me packet captures stated the following in private:
quote:
Got some packet captures of Youtube being sucky. However, adding the FW rules didn't change a thing. Not only that, but the rules never got tickeled, according to the logs.
Until hard evidence is present with packet captures, the most likely explanations are the fact that the Internet is an unreliable medium, and many different network routes/pipes (which vary per person) are often oversaturated these days.

twitch.tv tends to be overloaded at pretty much all times -- this has been going on for a couple years now, and is getting worse now that they've become "corporate sponsor-based" (now heavily reliant upon Sony with the PS4 situation). Try a different service (not justin.tv (they're the same as twitch.tv)), like Ustream or own3d (although the latter appears to have been sold).

Furthermore, many streaming sites (Youtube, etc.) use multiple forms of load balancing, including anycast (do not confuse this with multicast -- two unrelated things). You need to have great familiarity with network troubleshooting to be able to figure out where the actual problem lies -- blaming your ISP without hard evidence of those claims in packet captures is silly.

Uriel
@rr.com

Uriel

Anon

said by koitsu See Profile
Until hard evidence is present with packet captures, the most likely explanations are the fact that the Internet is an unreliable medium, and many different network routes/pipes (which vary per person) are often oversaturated these days.
[/BQUOTE :

How about a simple test then? I have Time Warner (50 Mb connection in San Diego, CA) and YouTube is horrible, constantly stuttering and not loading. Vimeo stutters too but not as bad.

I setup a SSL VPN proxy service (using one of their servers located in Los Angeles) and when I'm running the proxy I have no problems at all with YouTube or Vimeo. No stuttering and no buffering problems whatsoever, even at 1080p. Even with the added overhead of the SSL VPN and routing everything through a proxy in L.A. Youtube runs perfectly. If this had something to do with oversaturated pipes don't you think I'd still have issues?


DocDrew
How can I help?
Premium Member
join:2009-01-28
SoCal

DocDrew

Premium Member

I'll just leave this here:
»Why Is Everyone Having YouTube Streaming Issues?

The YouTube problem isn't specific to TWC...

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu to Uriel

MVM

to Uriel
said by Uriel :

said by koitsu :

Until hard evidence is present with packet captures, the most likely explanations are the fact that the Internet is an unreliable medium, and many different network routes/pipes (which vary per person) are often oversaturated these days.

How about a simple test then? I have Time Warner (50 Mb connection in San Diego, CA) and YouTube is horrible, constantly stuttering and not loading. Vimeo stutters too but not as bad.

I setup a SSL VPN proxy service (using one of their servers located in Los Angeles) and when I'm running the proxy I have no problems at all with YouTube or Vimeo. No stuttering and no buffering problems whatsoever, even at 1080p. Even with the added overhead of the SSL VPN and routing everything through a proxy in L.A. Youtube runs perfectly. If this had something to do with oversaturated pipes don't you think I'd still have issues?

Nope, I don't -- I don't think you understand how Internet routing works, nor how load balancing nor anycast work. But I digress.

If you want to provide proof of said throttling, specifically how it's been described in the aforementioned quoted URL, provide a packet capture showing me it. The thread posts I listed off are quite clear about it.

I am in no way/shape/form saying "TWC doesn't throttle" -- I am saying there is no actual hard technical evidence of them doing such at this time. The method/model described in the aforementioned thread indicates that TWC would have to be rewriting / redirecting HTTP traffic to an alternate location, which would be visible in a packet capture.
Decko37
join:2013-03-28
Goldsboro, NC

Decko37 to koitsu

Member

to koitsu
Well if it's not TWC throttling me, do you have any ideas on a way to fix this? I'm being forced to watch in 240p/360p while I have friends that have multiple 720p+/1080p+ streams up at the same time.
50Mb down/5Mb up, directly connected to Motorola SB6121 modem

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms [192.168.1.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 66.26.47.82
4 15 ms 20 ms 16 ms ae19.chrlncpop-rtr1.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.2

5 28 ms 23 ms 24 ms 107.14.19.48
6 21 ms 18 ms 24 ms ae-0-0.pr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.171]
7 30 ms 32 ms 33 ms twc-telus.pr0.chi10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.9.70]
8 32 ms 32 ms 38 ms vlan51.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.150.62]
9 42 ms 35 ms 37 ms ae-6-6.ebr1.Washington12.Level3.net [4.69.148.10
]
10 30 ms 31 ms 33 ms ae-104-3504.edge1.Washington12.Level3.net [4.69.
58.29]
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

Your traceroute is completely and entirely unhelpful (please read this to understand traceroute), and even if I had source/destination IPs, I'd still point out once again that Youtube/Google using anycast, as well as multiple layers of load balancing (both GSLB and DNS-based) across thousands upon thousands of servers and networks across the globe. That makes this very difficult (bordering on impossible) to diagnose. I will also point out Youtube actually does a form of rate-limiting in their Flash applet as well (though it's a logical design -- it would take me probably 2-3 pages to explain to you how it works (or seems to)) -- but this is not the cause of the issues.

Again I will repeat myself: the claims in the referenced URLs is that by filtering/blocking outbound packets to nonsensical network ranges, "you can fix the problem" because "TWC is throttling connections by sending web browsers to their own caches" -- and I have yet to see hard data (read: packet captures) proving that. Packet captures can/will prove or dismiss that specific claim.

What you're effectively asking me to do is to teach you nearly 15 years worth of networking troubleshooting knowledge, and without access to both endpoints (yours and Youtube's servers/network), and without access to any engineers in between. It's just implausible.

All I can tell you is that Youtube "being slow" is a universal problem, and has been for quite some time, regardless of ISP, and regardless of streaming service (twitch.tv/justin.tv, Ustream, and a couple other places regularly experience the same thing). I have even had users tell me "Youtube works fine on one of my systems but not my wifi/mobile phone!". You can read his conclusion (see his last post, last paragraph).

I see "Youtube slowness" periodically as well, throughout all hours of the day. I have some theories as to what's the root cause is, but it sure as hell isn't my ISP (Comcast). I've seen the same from twitch.tv/justin.tv at times, as well as other streaming providers. I only have so much visibility (see above), but the reality is that the Internet is something that is broken 24x7x365 for multitudes of reasons and is basically a "hobbled together" best-effort thing where solving real problems involves actual engineers and lots of red tape + money + time (the latter is the one nobody seems to have).

You can dig around online looking for other claims of slowdowns/etc. and you will find them ad nauseum for years now. Yet none of these people appear to have the low-level technical knowledge needed to actually diagnose this problem correctly -- instead what happens is people making wild claims/accusations and coming up with snake oil "fixes".

The only "workaround" that makes sense is using a VPN/proxy service, and that does not mean your ISP is throttling you, it means that you then begin shoving packets through a different router/take a different path to reach your VPN/proxy provider, then they shove your packets out a completely different router/path than what your (non-VPN'd) connection would be. Do people really think Youtube has a single network connection, a single server, a single *everything*? Sigh.
Decko37
join:2013-03-28
Goldsboro, NC

Decko37

Member

Alright, thanks.