YouTube - What gives?

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DravidDavid

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#116133 19-Apr-2013 09:54

I've been trying to fix a situation that has constantly baffled me over the years.

YouTube performance between work and at home varies majorly. Now, you might say it is because at work, my work station is part of a fibre fed network and if I run a speed test I get 98Mb/s down and 89Mb/s up. Compared to home where I get a maximum sync of 1.8Mb/s...

At work, YouTube says the video is buffering at massive 61300kbps. At home I get about 122kbps. It almost renders YouTube unusable unless I use a download manager to manage multiple streams. What I am confused about is, why can a single stream work at 61Mb/s at work but not 1.5Mb/s at home?

Is it because fibre is handled differently and a single stream is more capable? I didn't think this was the case, because at my folks house who have a 23Mb ADSL 2+ line at home, YouTube manages to stream a 1080p video at 18Mb/s.

So again, it has left me wondering, why my computer (which is not a slouch by the way) and my browser can't seem to stream a video at line speed. I don't mind waiting 10 minutes for a download to watch later, its just bugging me as to what is actually happening here. I initially put it down to caching and the video being unpopular. But it does not matter if I'm watching a video with 34 million veiws or 34.

I've been trying to find a browser that allows buffering on multiple streams, but have yet to find one.

Any information would be nice :)

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#802816 20-Apr-2013 15:56

Does this provide any useful info: http://www.youtube.com/my_speed

For fun you could try this to see any difference at all: http://www.youtube.com/html5

Not sure what you mean about buffering multiple streams. Do you mean pausing and waiting for load of multiple videos at the same time?

DravidDavid

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#802819 20-Apr-2013 16:02

gzt: Does this provide any useful info: http://www.youtube.com/my_speed

For fun you could try this to see any difference at all: http://www.youtube.com/html5

Not sure what you mean about buffering multiple streams. Do you mean pausing and waiting for load of multiple videos at the same time?

Thanks! Will look at those and see what happens.

When I say multiple streams, I meant just how a download manager works. Using multiple streams in order to download the content faster. I guess that would require support on YouTube's part. Videos can't exactly split and buffer at different stages of the video at the moment.

What I find REALLY annoying is that when I pause a video, it stops buffering until I play again. Switching to 240p and back to 480 does not seem to work anymore. I'll see if I can find some setting somewhere. The re-buffer the damn video does when you want to look at a previous part of the video is also very annoying.

I'll keep you posted.

DravidDavid

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#802907 20-Apr-2013 21:28

So...Not sure why I didn't do this to start with, but my girlfriends Mac seems to stream a video at 1500kbps to 2000kbps where as my computer intermittently buffers at 200kbps for a second, returns to 0kbps for about 3 seconds and peaks at 500kbps for 2 seconds and returns to 0kbps through-out the video.

Its really annoying. I'm going to be trying to re-install Flash tonight to see if that fixes anything.

insane

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#802916 20-Apr-2013 22:09

Are you using the correct DNS servers as stated by your current isp? If not you may not be getting redirected to their cache for popular videos.

freitasm

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#802917 20-Apr-2013 22:10

If you seriously want people to help you should provide some basic information. For example what ISP and plan you have at work and what ISP you have at home.

Some New Zealand ISPs have a Google cache inside their network and performance is a lot better than when accessing YouTube directly from the USA.

also if you are using a custom DNS in your PC and your ISP has a cache then the custom DNS will not know about the cache and point to the wrong YouTube server.

You have to give a lot more information before people can get to the bottom of it. Also as soon as you let us know which ISP this topic will be moved to correct forum.

Batman

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#802919 20-Apr-2013 22:15

He's just said it works with a mac...bbut not his pc

freitasm

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#802925 20-Apr-2013 22:31

So? They could gave different network configurations. We don't know and he needs to clarify.

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DravidDavid

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#802926 20-Apr-2013 22:37

freitasm: So? They could gave different network configurations. We don't know and he needs to clarify.

Maybe you didn't understand my post. It was more about why a single stream is capable of ridiculous speeds on one connection, but can't handle the lowest of speeds on another at other times. I knew it wasn't a network issue. I have since tested another computer on the same network and it works fine. Re-installing Flash appears to have resolved it slightly, but it is still intermittent.

I'm using my ISP's DNS. I'm on Slingshot unlimited...And no, there is nothing wrong with their network. Never was.

Its not a complex network situation. Netgear DG804G @ 100Mb/s. Funnily enough, the test via wireless works much better. Speed tests are normal and sync at the moment is the best it has ever been at just over 2Mb/s.

P.S: apologies about the wrong thread. Had two tabs open as I often do and posted to the wrong one. Thanks in advance for moving it.

gzt

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#802962 21-Apr-2013 08:29

It may help to know Chrome does not use Adobe Flash to play youtube videos. Also it does not use Flash to play html5 video.

If you are using any kind of connection optimisation software or network security/firewall software on your windows machine see if disabling that makes a difference.

You could also run ipconfig /flushdns on the off chance you have some really stale records in your dns cache.

Using a different dns would probably change your youtube CDN, so changing your dns might be an easy and interesting experiment to start with.

There could be many reasons the mac and windows machines might use different youtube CDN's or cache so at some point you will have to look into that side of things in detail if nothing else brings the light.

DravidDavid

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#803181 21-Apr-2013 18:02

Thanks gzt, didn't know that!

I have tried Google Chrome which seems to be more stable.

Just to emphasise the problem I'm experiencing...Its when the HTTP Video buffer goes from 270kbps then to 0kbps then to 500kbps and back to 0kbps, in two second intervals. Every now and then it will hit 1500 or 2200kbps, but never seems to be stable.
The laptop on the other hands sustains speeds between 600 and 2500 without a problem. I have flushed the DNS, reset the TCP/IP tables...ect...ect. It worked perfectly fine for 5 minutes then went back to normal.

I have run out of options. I haven't formatted my machine in over two years. Maybe it is just that time again.

bender

220 posts

Master Geek

#803342 21-Apr-2013 22:14

It's not your machine, we get this complaint a lot. The cause usually is an older browser still streaming with flash instead of h264.

In my own testing h264 videos are considerably more cached on the NZ YouTube caches. Flash and webm (Chrome) tend to not be cached and so the performance is poor.

Upgrade/switch to a browser that uses h264 (I uses Safari and I don't have Flash installed at all) and you'd find the performance is miles faster

DravidDavid

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#803348 21-Apr-2013 22:25

bender: It's not your machine, we get this complaint a lot. The cause usually is an older browser still streaming with flash instead of h264.

In my own testing h264 videos are considerably more cached on the NZ YouTube caches. Flash and webm (Chrome) tend to not be cached and so the performance is poor.

Upgrade/switch to a browser that uses h264 (I uses Safari and I don't have Flash installed at all) and you'd find the performance is miles faster

Thanks Bender! I'll try Safari and see how I go.

Firefox still seems to blast through those videos on the Mac though. The girlfriend is using firefox. Come to think of it, she never updates it. That could probably be it. So many complaints about the new versions for various reasons.

Will report on how I go.

DravidDavid

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#806750 28-Apr-2013 15:54

I think this issue might be related to something other than my computer or network now.

Laptop and desktop computer are buffering very slow. So under the impression that it was Slingshot's unlimited plan, I moved to a capped plan. After trying Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari I can't see any marked improvement with performance.
I can say I was up till about 3AM last night and videos buffered at a constant 1800kbps rather than the usual buffering speed between 0 and 500.

Nothing else is utilizing the network at the time. Its either myself or my partner's laptop. I have sat down and run tests between them. Sometimes the laptop gets a better stream, other times the desk-top does. I'm not running them at the same time.

FYI:

- DNS is set manually in modem. IP's are assigned in modem too.
- Downstream sync: 1967kbps / Upstream sync: 143kbps (4KM away from MSY exchange which I am fed directly from)
- DNS cache has been flushed and all that jazz
- Flash re-installed as well as Firefox. Hardware acceleration disabled.

Streaming on more popular videos seems better. I can put "nz" in front of the YouTube domain and it stream a tad faster.

It is getting quite frustrating. Is there anything else that someone can suggest?

freitasm

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#806765 28-Apr-2013 16:27

Moved to Slingshot forum.

Do you have a master splitter? Are you on a DSL line only? Are you sure you are fed directly from the exchange, not from a cabinet? Is it a LLU connection?

Please post modem stats.

DravidDavid

1907 posts

Uber Geek

#806831 28-Apr-2013 19:02

- No master splitter. Plugged in to master jack. Too poor to have one installed at the moment but definitely on the cards. Ther eis no problem with line stability at the moment anyway.
- Wholesale connection which is definitely direct fed.

Modem Stats:

ADSL Firmware Version A2pB023b.d20e
DownStream Connection Speed 1947 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 171 kbps
Line Attenuation Down: 60.5db
Line Attenuation Up: 35.4db
Noise Margin Down: 7.6db
Noise Margin Up: 12.5db

I know it's crap. But I've seen much better performance from YouTube on this connection in the past than I'm getting now. Updated to Firefox 20.01 and performance came back, but it was 5PM. Will continue testing tonight.

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