Slow YouTube on VDSL

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Slow YouTube on VDSL

arcon

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#201800 4-Sep-2016 12:35

I've been getting really slow YouTube speeds over the past 2 days (I'm on VDSL). Has anyone else been getting this? Basically can't watch 720p without pauses, could stream 1080p fine for the past couple years. Tried rebooting modem etc.

Speed test shows my average down speed has dropped from 33 to about 26Mbps, should still be enough to stream... I've contacted Spark but they say everything looks normal :/

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#1622364 4-Sep-2016 12:35

Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post, so here is an automated reply with some important things to note regarding broadband speeds.

If you are posting regarding DSL speeds please check that

you have reset your modem and router
your PC (or other PCs in your LAN) is not downloading large files when you are testing - you are not being throttled by your ISP due to going over the monthly cap
your tests are always done on an ethernet connection to the router - do not use wireless for testing
you read this topic and follow the instructions there.

Make sure you provide information for other users to help you. If you have not already done it, please EDIT your post and add this now:

Your ISP and plan
Type of connection (ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL)
Your modem DSL stats (do not worry about posting Speedtest, we need sync rate, attenuation and noise margin)
Your general location (or street)
If you are rural or urban
If you know your connection is to an exchange, cabinet or conklin
If your connection is to a ULL or wholesale service
If you have done an isolation test as per the link above

Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

I recommend you read these two blog posts:

I am the Geekzone Robot and I am here to help. I am from the Internet. I do not interact. Do not expect other replies from me.

Talkiet

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#1622376 4-Sep-2016 12:42

Hi there - do you have a static IP or dynamic? Also, can you go to the followign URL and paste the output here please?

http://redirector.c.youtube.com/report_mapping

Feel free to anonymise your IP address at the start (Here's mine for example)

125.236.xxx.yyy => tnz-akl3 (125.236.192.0/19)

I can say there's no widespread issue, and our Youtube caches are delivering precisely the amount of traffic I would expect over the last few days and I keep a very very close eye on them.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

arcon

423 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1622453 4-Sep-2016 15:00

Thanks for your reply I just watched a 720p vid without issue so it seems to have resolved itself.

In any case I am dynamic IP as far as i know: 122.57.xxx.yyy => tnz-akl3 (122.57.168.0/21)

Jase2985

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#1622477 4-Sep-2016 16:47

im in auckland, and ive been having issues with youtube videos loading the initial picture, and then poping up the loading circle on the screen but nothing actually loading, could take 2-3 refreshes of the page to get it to work. doesnt happen on every video.

not sure why im connected to the WLG one?

122.58.xxx.xxx => tnz-wlg2 (122.58.40.0/21)

Talkiet

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#1622493 4-Sep-2016 17:29

Jase2985:

im in auckland, and ive been having issues with youtube videos loading the initial picture, and then poping up the loading circle on the screen but nothing actually loading, could take 2-3 refreshes of the page to get it to work. doesnt happen on every video.

not sure why im connected to the WLG one?
122.58.xxx.xxx => tnz-wlg2 (122.58.40.0/21)

Any odd behaviour like that would be related to Google themselves (Or your browser/extensions), not our caching setup. As for why you're mapped to the Wlg node, NZ is long and skinny, and all the Internet comes in at the top and basically goes down the country. This means it's often advantageous to serve customers from south of where they actually are from a network dimensioning point of view. I personally have mapped my own connection to every youtube cache we have in the country and there's never been any discernable difference. In fact I struggled to even find a difference at all comparing synthetic numbers. It's mapping you as per my design.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

1101

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#1622844 5-Sep-2016 09:08

Ive the same issue with youtube
ADSL2, speedtest = approx 9Mbs download

constant buffering(?) , youtube is now often unwatchable . I have to download the YT vids & watch them offline
It was particularly bad this weekend.

Watchme.nz : I gave up try to watch that months back : completely unwatchable with all the buffering/pauses

Lightbox streams perfectly, so I'd assume its nothing at my end causing this

Spark had issues with youtube some months back, that was fixed(by spark) , now its getting bad again

Talkiet

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#1622923 5-Sep-2016 10:25

1101:

Ive the same issue with youtube
ADSL2, speedtest = approx 9Mbs download

constant buffering(?) , youtube is now often unwatchable . I have to download the YT vids & watch them offline
It was particularly bad this weekend.

Watchme.nz : I gave up try to watch that months back : completely unwatchable with all the buffering/pauses

Lightbox streams perfectly, so I'd assume its nothing at my end causing this

Spark had issues with youtube some months back, that was fixed(by spark) , now its getting bad again

This is confusing, but may be an issue specific to your connection or PC. Every single metric I can see on youtube performance is showing me that it's performing really, really well for Spark customers... Traffic patterns from all of our cache servers are beautiful consistent curves with no errors and none are even approaching congestion. The internal youtube performance metrics I can see don't show me any Spark customer prefixes that are in trouble, and even the public data ( https://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ ) shows that Spark ADSL, VDSL and Fibre are all HD Verified nationwide. There will be some areas that individually drop below on ADSL, but that's because some areas have a higher percentage of rural customers and instead of choosing to exclude them from the reports (like I could do, and like some ISPs - at least overseas, do) I have left them in, so some slow lines can drag down performance reports in some areas.

There's another category called "Spark Fallback"... that's a category where we can't categorise customers by access type for various reasons - predominantly Static IP users. That category too is nationally HD Verified.

What could be happening is that for some reason you're not being mapped to one of our cache servers (The URL further up this thread will show you) or you might be exclusively watching unpopular or brand new videos that haven't made it into the local caches yet.

(9 Mbps isn't blistering, but I would expect, all else being equal, that you could stream 720p youtube without issues)

What do you get on fast.com, and what youtube node are you mapped to (The redirector url further up)

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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jpmsvo

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1624236 5-Sep-2016 19:51

Hi,

Getting this same issue. Oddly, short videos' seem fine. The longer ones are having issues. Noticed the problem on Saturday the 3rd.

125.239.x.x => tnz-akl3 (125.239.40.0/21)

Fibre, 100M. 

Same issue on Laptop & PS4. 

Do not have issue on another ISP. (I just got back from overseas where I didn't see the issue with my laptop/ps)

Rebooted modem. 

Dynamic IP, AFAIK.

Cheers,

hyperman

418 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1624241 5-Sep-2016 20:38

I am getting similar problems at peak times however I am not on spark;

Could the issue be a upstream one?

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yitz

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#1624242 5-Sep-2016 20:39

Do you get the "Experiencing interruptions" message?

Have to say I've experienced similar on another NZ ISP in the last few days too, can't rule out my crappy Wi-Fi setup but don't think it's that.

hyperman

418 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1624244 5-Sep-2016 20:41

yitz: Do you get the "Experiencing interruptions" message? Have to say I've experienced similar on another NZ ISP in the last few days too, can't rule out my crappy Wi-Fi setup but don't think it's that.

certainly do

however in my setup I can defiantly rule out wi-fi issues

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer

jpmsvo

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1624258 5-Sep-2016 21:17

I haven't noticed that error, might be because I mainly stream through the PS.

I get a pause, with a loading circle. Then a drop in resolution.

Talkiet

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#1624312 5-Sep-2016 22:54

Darn it... I wanted to show you how to confirm the traffic is coming from the local youtube cache during playback, but it seems my trusty old utility from ages ago appears to have stopped working on Windows 10 Anniversary edition...

https://sourceforge.net/projects/showtraf/

That utility does/should show current TCP connections and, importantly, traffic per connection. I have in the past used that to identify the streams coming into the PC (combination of what connection is ticking up a good amount of data and what IP it's coming from). If that utility works for you, feel free to run it up when you are experiencing bad playback and see if the youtube data is coming in from IP addresses in the 219.88.188.x and 219.88.189.x ranges.

Standard other troubleshooting measures apply.

- Try another streaming service using on-net CDN delivery (Lightbox or Netflix are good choices) and see if they have delivery issues at the same time

- Make sure you are testing with a popular video (If you get good performance with popular videos, but interruptions with less commonly viewed videos then the issue is likely outside our network) - Here's an example popular video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM1J4LO7QnQ

- Make sure your upstream isn't congested

- Make sure you are using standard DNS servers

- Disable ad-blockers and try another browser (YES I have seen this have an affect)

- Try fast.com and report back what speed that gives you - try it several times.

Normally Youtube performance on Spark is absolutely stellar (excepting cases where the Chorus access line limits performance - ie a bad old DSL connection or Conklin type issues) so even a small number of people experiencing issues is worthy of some investigation. Unfortunately every single metric I can see is showing me 100% health so the more detail I could get the better - especially if you get regular degradation that CAN NOT be explained by the access link. I'm doubly interested if the performance issue is replicable and occurs 24*7.

Cheers - N

[edit: TCPview from Sysinternals does run and shows the traffic per connection]

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/tcpview

Unfortunately it appears that the traffic (when I just tested anyway) when using chrome is coming in on QUIC (a UDP based protocol) and only part of the session setup is coming in over TCP connections.

When I switched to Firefox, the traffic came in as expected over TCP (and from one of our local servers)

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

hio77

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Lizard Networks

#1624318 5-Sep-2016 23:16

Talkiet:

Darn it... I wanted to show you how to confirm the traffic is coming from the local youtube cache during playback, but it seems my trusty old utility from ages ago appears to have stopped working on Windows 10 Anniversary edition...

https://sourceforge.net/projects/showtraf/

That utility does/should show current TCP connections and, importantly, traffic per connection. I have in the past used that to identify the streams coming into the PC (combination of what connection is ticking up a good amount of data and what IP it's coming from). If that utility works for you, feel free to run it up when you are experiencing bad playback and see if the youtube data is coming in from IP addresses in the 219.88.188.x and 219.88.189.x ranges.

Could you not simply use resource monitor, built in and works perfectly as far as what your trying to show.

I do have to say i have noticed some odd issues with youtube caches on another isp of late, connectivity to the cache is perfect but the cache seems to be struggling in getting the content to spread out. Sometimes requiring a reload to wake itself back up.

I have not personally collected enough statistics to really make a claim that there is a fault to bring it up however, i do find the timing to be interesting...

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

richms

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#1624324 6-Sep-2016 05:12

hio77:

I do have to say i have noticed some odd issues with youtube caches on another isp of late, connectivity to the cache is perfect but the cache seems to be struggling in getting the content to spread out. Sometimes requiring a reload to wake itself back up.

I have not personally collected enough statistics to really make a claim that there is a fault to bring it up however, i do find the timing to be interesting...

Would that be 2degrees? I only really youtube on the TV, and it has been aweful on my 2degrees connection, stopping with loading for many seconds and then reverting to 720 or worse and doing that catch up glitchey playback. Rewinding it and playing the same thing again was usually faultless.

Changed it to use my bigpipe connection that I normally only use for torrents and seedbox syncing and was much better all last night.

Richard rich.ms

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