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Anon

[CenturyTel] YouTube being blocked by CenturyLink

I've had 5 days of intermittent periods where I cannot access YouTube for most of the day. I have 3 machines and a phone where this YouTube problem is occurring. I have good internet speed and no other computer problems. I believe that this is an ISP blocking YouTube issue by CenturyLink.
TheMayor
join:2002-05-09

TheMayor

Member

Is it that you can't access the site itself or the video's take a long time to actually start playing?

Did you see this thread, which was the last one before you posted?

»[Qwest] YouTube and Google started stalling suddenly Qwest CL

WeeOneFlava
@184.101.3.x

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Anon

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we are having the same issue.. we're in AZ. we can access youtube but it won't play ANY videos.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

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I heard that at a recent board meeting Centurylink executives decided to block youtube just because they can.

Seriously. Why is it every time someone has trouble reaching a site their first thought is that there is some alternate motive to the trouble?

mooch
No Booing Allowed
join:2001-11-11
Sunbury, OH

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Same issue being discussed in the thread that is currently directly under this new post, lots of folks having the same issue....including me.

»[Qwest] YouTube and Google started stalling suddenly Qwest CL
mooch

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Oh, I had missed the 3rd thread on this same issue...

»[CenturyTel] CenturyLink and YouTube

Please Talk To Us about this Centurylink.

dslanywhere
@50.245.238.x

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I am in Virginia using Centurylink (old Embarq). I am not having any problems accessing or playing YouTube videos.

Also talking to some of the local techs, they're telling me that almost all of their remotes with DSLAMS are on fiber.
ArizonaSteve
join:2004-01-31
Apache Junction, AZ

ArizonaSteve

Member

Here in AZ the only way I can play Youtube now and get around the blockage at C/L is to fire up a VPN to get it started. Once it's started I can usually disconnect from the VPN and it will still play. Oddly the preroll ads always seem to play without any problem.
Netflix quit working here over a year ago when C/L started advertising their Prism TV service which seems like quite a coincidence but I don't know if a VPN will fix that too since I've already cancelled the Netflix service. I've talked to several C/L techs about the problem but they either don't know anything about it or have been told not to say anything. One guy did say that he though Prism was taking most of the bandwidth.

bdriandel
@174.47.83.x

bdriandel

Anon

Same problem here in Seattle. Here're 13 pages (so far) of CL customers posting on the YouTube product forums:

»productforums.google.com ··· 5-false]

tl;dr: CenturyLink's official statement is that YouTube/Google recently started limiting connections to CL. No 'why' has been determined. A CL employee in the thread is claiming that Google has admitted to the throttling and will be restoring connections to CL 'in the next few weeks'.

I'm sure we'll never know the details of the deals going on behind the scenes.

mooch
No Booing Allowed
join:2001-11-11
Sunbury, OH

mooch

Member

Thanks for posting up the google forum posts on this issue.

Lots'o Centurylink customers not happy!
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

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I'm not on YouTube super often, but I wanted to report that it seems to be working as well as is physically possible on my 1.5M line.

I seem to be watching in 360p and buffering is minimal.

Qwest area, Flagstaff AZ.
drslash (banned)
Goya Asma
join:2002-02-18
Marion, IA

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I have/had no problems at all with HD on youtube. My sons home from college consume a lot of youtube and they report no issues at all. I am in a former Qwest area with 40/5.
Donat76
join:2003-01-26
Oelwein, IA

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Centurylink's peering connections with Youtube are becoming congested during prime time. This is most likely a Centurylink issue. Your speed test will show no problem but your videos will buffer or stall.

»blog.level3.com/global-c ··· ddleman/

"That leaves the remaining six peers with congestion on almost all of the interconnect ports between us. Congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity. They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers. They are not allowing us to fulfil the requests their customers make for content.

Five of those congested peers are in the United States and one is in Europe. There are none in any other part of the world. All six are large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market. In countries or markets where consumers have multiple Broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers."

stardruid
@65.129.127.x

stardruid

Anon

The fact of the matter is Youtube/Google is being throttled. I've talk to Centurylink techs and they said Google was the one throttling Centurylink customers, but Google was been for net neutrality and other have said they were told Google refused to pay a bandwidth fee that Centurlink demanded and Centurylink was throttling Google sites because of that. You decide for yourself, ether way thsoe of us who are Centurylink customers are screwed.

Here the thread we had at Google talk about it and what tech told us.
»productforums.google.com ··· nggSfHh8

toby
Troy Mcclure
join:2001-11-13
Seattle, WA

toby

Member

This could mean that CL will add 'Google connection recovery fee', wouldn't put it past them.

It will start off at a low amount less than a dollar, ending in an odd number, 87 cents, or 63 cents, then climb from there, just like their other fees.
coryw
join:2013-12-22
Flagstaff, AZ

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Congestion at the default link between your local area and YouTube, while unfortunate, is not necessarily intentional throttling on CenturyLink's part.

The main reason that switching to a VPN or a proxy often works is because the proxy is going to be using another link, to another network, and then back out to YouTube (or Netflix, or whatever other high-throughput video service is desired.)

What will be interesting to know is if CenturyLink is working on improving these links. Google and Netflix are basically in the practice of naming and shaming these days, so if they are not speaking out about CenturyLink (the way they do Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T), they are probably aware that CenturyLink plans to beef up those links.

Keep in mind that the actual problem typically isn't a connection directly between Google and CenturyLink, but between CenturyLink and an upstream ISP, such as Level3 or Cogent, and that organization is Google's ISP as well.
coryw

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Did they say which ISPs they were specifically?

The first three are almost certainly Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon, the last two could just as easily be Frontier, Cox, Time Warner, or any of the other large-ish and recognizable incumbent ISPs.

Also, as Level3 mentioned, it's not CL as a whole, it's a particular link to L3's network. (Though, it's interesting that, say, ArizonaSteve See Profile is having problems, but I'm not, given that my town's only link to the larger CenturyLink network is to Phoenix, and I haven't seen or heard anybody in my town having issues, other than those of us are on technologies that prevent our connections to the local CO even being very good.)

Anyway, L3 posted an interesting follow-up, with some information on what a "good" link looks like. »blog.level3.com/global-c ··· aligned/

Plus can you actually be sure L3 is the bottlenecked link? It could well be that Cogent is the "middleman" in this situation, and it could even be that all five of Level3's congested peering points are with AT&T/Comcast/Verizon, since most of the very biggest telecommunications companies are going to peer with L3/Cogent etc at multiple points.

Without a specific name-and-shame, I think it's unfair to just blame CL and presume that (even if CL says it will get fixed) that the situation will never change.

boost
@173.8.126.x

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I spoke to tech at CL today and he confirmed Google is only opening so many doors for data from CL. My problems started 20 days ago.

No work around available.
ArizonaSteve
join:2004-01-31
Apache Junction, AZ

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Youtube suddenly started working here for me again. It was fine all weekend so they must have fixed the bottle neck.