50M YouTube buffering - Page 2

muppetman11 · 18-03-2012, 18:20

Will this be a problem for users of Sky TV once Anytime+ is opened up to all ISP's , or is it unique to YT HD videos ?

Blackened · 18-03-2012, 18:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by General Maximus

we were having this discussion in another thread a few days ago

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...uploading.html
Might be worth a merge.

No way it is YT's problem. If a service as massive as YT was failing this badly, you'd hear a LOT more about it. I sometimes switch to 3G to stream when VM lets me down, it's literally that bad sometimes.

As I mentioned in the other thread, playing with DNS sometimes helps.

Doz007 · 18-03-2012, 18:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Will this be a problem for users of Sky TV once Anytime+ is opened up to all ISP's , or is it unique to YT HD videos ?

It's unique to YouTube MM, like I can download at full speed from iTunes, Steam, Xbox Live etc.

Skie · 18-03-2012, 18:39

Youtube uses a massive CDN with many servers/locations hosting videos. Some videos may be hosted by different servers and its usually when you hit a video on a server that is being hammered (usually when a popular new video is also on it, before it can be replicated to other servers) you will see slow buffering.

Different ISP's peer differently too so they may even hit different servers for the same video at the same time. If you find a slow video, trawl around and see if every other video is slow. Most of the times its just that one video. If its all of them, then you are looking at a network issue.

Zee · 18-03-2012, 19:10

for me its all videos on vm, on Infinity its no videos

Doz007 · 18-03-2012, 20:59

It's definately not a problem with every single video my side but equally I've not had this problem with any other ISP.......

qasdfdsaq · 18-03-2012, 21:24

Just came across a slow Youtube video on my VM connection - interestingly it is virtually directly on VM's network:

C:\Users\Administrator>tracert 64.15.115.87

Tracing route to 64.15.115.87 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms n1.lan [10.1.0.11]
2 7 ms 7 ms 6 ms cpc5-sgyl34-2-0-gw.sgyl.cable.virginmedia.com [92.235.188.1]
3 11 ms 6 ms 7 ms sgyl-core-1a-ge225.network.virginmedia.net [81.97.49.149]
4 9 ms 11 ms 10 ms sgyl-core-2a-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.182.178.90]
5 18 ms 14 ms 14 ms manc-bb-1c-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net [81.97.48.77]
6 14 ms 16 ms 18 ms manc-bb-1a-ae11-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.85]
7 15 ms 17 ms 15 ms tcma-ic-1-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.163.226]
8 15 ms 22 ms 17 ms 182-14-250-212.static.virginmedia.com [212.250.14.182]
9 21 ms 22 ms 24 ms 64.15.115.87

Trace complete.

This video was constantly stuttering and pausing to buffer - despite loading directly from within VM's network by the looks of things.

Ironically, refreshing the *same* video at the same quality routed me to a different server, this time off VM's network:

C:\Users\Administrator>tracert 208.65.155.92

Tracing route to 208.65.155.92 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms n1.lan [10.1.0.11]
2 13 ms 8 ms 16 ms cpc5-sgyl34-2-0-gw.sgyl.cable.virginmedia.com [92.235.188.1]
3 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms sgyl-core-1a-ge133.network.virginmedia.net [81.97.48.37]
4 7 ms 10 ms 14 ms sgyl-core-2a-ae2-0.network.virginmedia.net [195.182.178.90]
5 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms manc-bb-1c-ae6-0.network.virginmedia.net [81.97.48.77]
6 12 ms 27 ms 17 ms manc-bb-1a-ae11-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.85]
7 20 ms 21 ms 23 ms brnt-bb-1b-ae1-0.network.virginmedia.net [212.43.163.86]
8 19 ms 20 ms 19 ms brnt-tmr-1-ae5-0.network.virginmedia.net [213.105.159.50]
9 20 ms 20 ms 21 ms telc-ic-1-as0-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.253.185.74]
10 22 ms 19 ms 20 ms te1-3.ccr01.lon04.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.15.69]
11 22 ms 21 ms 21 ms te7-7.mpd02.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.38.69]
12 29 ms 26 ms 30 ms te0-0-0-4.mpd22.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.57.157]
13 29 ms 25 ms 28 ms te0-2-0-0.mpd22.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.28.154]
14 33 ms 53 ms 34 ms te2-1.mpd01.ams04.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.49.10]
15 27 ms 27 ms 32 ms 149.11.38.62
16 40 ms 39 ms 36 ms 208.65.155.92

Trace complete.

And in the latter case, the video loaded six times faster (though still only using ~6mb out of my 50mb connection).

A third try of the same video, this time on my Infinity connection, loaded up six times faster again, using up the full speed of my 38.5mbps Infinity line:

C:\Users\Administrator>tracert 173.194.5.204

Tracing route to 173.194.5.204 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms gateway.lan [10.0.0.1]
2 21 ms 21 ms 22 ms gateway.bt [217.32.142.104]
3 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms route-1.dc0-h1.bt [217.32.142.158]
4 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms route-0.dc1-h2.bt [213.120.163.18]
5 27 ms 28 ms 28 ms 217.32.27.14
6 28 ms 27 ms 28 ms route-0.dc1-h4.bt [217.32.27.178]
7 28 ms 28 ms 27 ms acc1-10GigE-0-2-0.mr.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.250.66]
8 34 ms 35 ms 35 ms core1-te0-12-0-1.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.250.22]
9 35 ms 35 ms 34 ms peer1-xe2-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.254.100]
10 36 ms 36 ms 36 ms 195.99.126.113
11 35 ms 35 ms 36 ms 209.85.252.186
12 36 ms 36 ms 36 ms 209.85.240.60
13 36 ms 36 ms 36 ms 209.85.249.95
14 35 ms 35 ms 35 ms 173.194.5.204

Trace complete.

So, the quick spot test above shows:
1) UK Youtube server directly connected to VM - ultra slow
2) NL Youtube server 6 hops from VM - much faster but still slow
3) UK Youtube server 4 hops from BT - super fast.

I picked another two videos with similar results - VM's own server(s) performed the slowest on all three videos, whereas Dutch/French servers over transit were a lot faster, but UK servers on other ISPs were much much faster still. Interestingly I'm yet to see my VM connection using any UK servers other than their own, ultra-slow ones.

It looks like VM run their own (local cache?) Youtube servers in Manchester somewhere and these are the slowest of the lot.

Now if only I could figure out how to override Youtube's server picker thing...

hjf288 · 18-03-2012, 22:16

It was like this all the time on BE ADSL2+

Virgin media hasnt been too bad but tonight 1080p and 720p is horrible on some videos...

qasdfdsaq · 18-03-2012, 23:03

If anyone wants to actually be useful, download Media Sniffer and list the exact server(s) that are slow. You may need winpcap as well.

qasdfdsaq · 20-03-2012, 21:50

Oh and scheduled maintenance at Telecity Manchester a fortnight from now. Which means VM/Google's local Youtube servers will be even slower/unreachable for a little while.

Excellent!

---------- Post added at 22:50 ---------- Previous post was at 22:47 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Will this be a problem for users of Sky TV once Anytime+ is opened up to all ISP's , or is it unique to YT HD videos ?

Based on what I've found (and nobody has claimed anything to the contrary as yet) it's the Manchester Youtube servers that are the problem, and far as I can tell VM are the only ones to use them.

Zee · 20-03-2012, 21:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Oh and scheduled maintenance at Telecity Manchester a fortnight from now. Which means VM/Google's local Youtube servers will be even slower/unreachable for a little while.

Excellent!

---------- Post added at 22:50 ---------- Previous post was at 22:47 ----------

Based on what I've found (and nobody has claimed anything to the contrary as yet) it's the Manchester Youtube servers that are the problem, and far as I can tell VM are the only ones to use them.

What does that mean exactly, the problem may be resolved 2 weeks from now or.....?

qasdfdsaq · 20-03-2012, 22:00

No it means the problem will get worse for a little while. To be honest I doubt anyone would notice.

Zee · 20-03-2012, 22:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

No it means the problem will get worse for a little while. To be honest I doubt anyone would notice.

but surely, after the maintanance it'll be better? we can only hope...

qasdfdsaq · 20-03-2012, 22:05

The maintenance is maintenance of the datacentre's main routers, not of VM's Youtube partner servers.

One Pound · 21-03-2012, 11:11

It looks like when a YouTube video loads it buffers the first 40 seconds or so and from there it only buffers 1 second per second. I just had a look at a video and it does this perfectly, first 40 seconds were buffered in a couple of seconds then from then on 1 second buffered each second!

In theory this is OK since the video should always play smoothly as it would always buffer 40 seconds ahead. This would also reduce wasted bandwidth where people load a whole video but only watch a few seconds. In practice though, I've found the video often stops loading and I need to skip forward 1 second to get it loading again, also I might want to skip to somewhere else in the video without waiting for it to buffer.

There's definitely some shaping going on, the question is, is it by Virgin or YouTube? I know that if I load a video at work, the video loads in a couple of seconds.