The following cache server is overloaded and any video I open that connects to it buffers terribly (About 5 % -10% of all YouTube videos I load are like this)
cache server: r1---sn-cxaaj5o5q5-t0az
right click "stats for nerds" Of course if you're not on bell or just happen to hit another server the video will work for you.
One thing to try is if you stop the video for a 30s or so and restart it should stream fine. If so, it's their cache otherwise it's your connection. FWIW you're not the only one.
Something else you can look for is the initial delay. They (likely more Google then Bell), use / abuse it to allow caching. You can see this if you restart the video and it streams right away but buffers after.
I got the exact same issue with r1---sn-cxaaj5o5q5-t0az, everything just keep buffering over and over again and is unwatchable. Like this video right here:
If you switch to a different DNS, you should end up with an IP address to a Youtube/Netflix/etc server somewhere else, instead of your ISP's cached server. In theory, from what I've read, the ISP server should be the fastest server you can access, simply due to its proximity, however, in situations such as this, you probably want to use a different server and the DNS change should do that for you.
Weird. Not in Montreal but I can confirm this. Happens more at night. Won't go into how to work around it as Bell should really be looking into this again (changing DNS / vpn are not involved). Like before, there aren't any problems if the cache is hot. For what it's worth I tried calling support, they are completely clueless. Does Bell even monitor these forums any more?
FYI, I posted this in the Bell Direct, I suggest you guys all do the same, you can even use my text or modify it if you prefer. :
[BROWSING] YouTube cached servers at Bell are overloaded
Hi, please do something with the YouTube caching devices or servers that Google provided Bell with. They are suffering for overloading, causing lots of YouTube video to LAG. It was diagnosed by the Community that it is the caching servers that is the issue. Using a VPN connection (to avoid using the Caching) make that works, so that confirms it.
Please have someone from the Bell Engineering team contact the Youtube Engineers to ADD more capacity to the cache servers! I suggest you do that prior to the holidays since lots more people will be in vacation and will have LOTS of free time to go on YouTube!
No other video sites seems having the issue (Netflix, Amazon Video, etc); they are all OK.
If these cache servers are managed by Google there's not much bell can do, afaik. Buy they can definitely y pressure google to fix it
I don't know the cache deal between Google and ISP, but any properly configured cache server should be sending new connections to another server once it reaches, say, 70% capacity. The problem is, if Bell (or any ISP) told Google to not kick people away when at 70%, people will experience problems. So if Google takes awhile to update the cache server capacity, an ISP that does not respect capacity will make their users suffer on a cache server.
When it comes to changing your DNS to force the website request to go to another Google server, is the ISP issued hardware respecting that request? Change your DNS (8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4) on ISP issued equipment and then do a trace route to see if you are being sent to the open internet. Try on your own router (a new PPPoE session to create a bridged connection) with a DNS change and trace route.
I blocked these two IPs in tomato 184.150.168.185 ( I think this is the important one) 184.150.182.12
You can also block all of 184.150.168.0 /24
as a last resort/ test
Maybe the IPs are different for everyone, you might have to find your own with wireshark
if its working correctly, the video takes a few extra seconds to start as it fails to connect to r1---sn-cxaaj5o5q5-t0az and then switches to another server.
Tomato instructions
You could probably block it with other types of routers or directly in Windows / Mac, I'll let others chime in if they manage to do this.
