Holy crap, there's a command line you can do in windows to make Youtube FLY

[BUTCH1]

Worked well for me, I'm a TWC (Bright house) customer, the difference is amazing, I loaded severat recent release HD movie trailers and not a hint of buffering, the DL finished well before the promo was halfway through playing...

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Yes. If they were doing traffic shaping this trick wouldn't work.

So Google's CDNs work better depending on the ISP? How and why would they do that? FWIW, before blocking the CDNs, AT&T DSL (2.5/512) worked better for me than TWC (30/1).

 

[BUTCH1]

THAAAAAAAAAAAAANK YOOOOOOOU!!!!!!

Youtube has been freezing every 30 seconds - 2 minutes for me for the past few weeks or more. It would just stop loading the video. I'd have to jump back and forth to get it start playing again.

I haven't dont any research on these ranges yet, but I'm guessing they're the peering networks TWC has with Google. If that's the case, Time Warner can go fuck themselves because they are obviously throttling networks that were supposedly created to improve performance and lower their own overhead with regards to youtube traffic. Now they've just gone and fucked themselves because all of this traffic will be going over $$$ circuits. Assholes.

Now I have to find a script that will constantly load 1080p youtube videos 24/7. TWC can suck it.

What they try to do is sell you a "faster" version of their service while intentionally crippling the bandwidth you already paid for, money grubbing bitches..

 

[Lifted]

Yes. If they were doing traffic shaping this trick wouldn't work.

Traffic shaping is EXACTLY why this trick works. They are shaping the traffic flowing through their peering exchange with Google, or they simply don't have the capacity to support the exchange. I don't believe your theory that the servers are being overloaded from TWC customers bit. I'm not saying this isn't the case, I just don't see Google, with all of their power and bandwidth optimizations, setting aside servers to sit idle while others are being hammered. That's not how they do things. I was getting hicups and pauses on every video, even the most popular ones, videos that would have been streaming directly from RAM. That was at every resolution from 320 through 1080. These same videos load in seconds when avoiding the TWC <-> Google peering exchange points.

 

[disappoint]

VIRGE is right. This is only going to work as long as few people are doing it. If everyone did this the direct download servers will start to slow down as they get overwhelmed with too much traffic. Not to mention if your ISP starts throttling those servers next!

 

[disappoint]

dont notice any difference (comcast)

Did you block inbound and outbound traffic for those IP ranges?

 

[Lifted]

Did you block inbound and outbound traffic for those IP ranges?

Blocking these ranges only helps Time Warner customers.

 

[disappoint]

Blocking these ranges only helps Time Warner customers.

Just keep spreading that misinformation. I'm sure no one will notice. People on other ISPs posted it worked for them as well.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Marked for later.

 

[JimmiG]

Going to try this at home tonight. I have a 100Mb connection but sometimes can't play 720p reliably. Trying to rip videos from the CDN servers sometimes gives me download speeds of <60KB/s where as I normally download at 8-12MB/s.

 

[Lifted]

Just keep spreading that misinformation. I'm sure no one will notice. People on other ISPs posted it worked for them as well.

OK, not try to spread misinformation. I just noticed a few posts stating it made no difference for people on other ISP's. For some reason I thought the article specifically mentioned TWC.

 

[ViRGE]

Traffic shaping is EXACTLY why this trick works. They are shaping the traffic flowing through their peering exchange with Google, or they simply don't have the capacity to support the exchange.

That's not traffic shaping though (at least not by any conventional definition). Traffic shaping is when you recognize the content by protocol or deep packet inspection, and then prioritize it based on that. If TW was traffic shaping then YouTube would be slow no matter the server, because they would always be detecting video traffic and deprioritizing it. What you're describing is an overloaded link, which is different.

I don't believe your theory that the servers are being overloaded from TWC customers bit. I'm not saying this isn't the case, I just don't see Google, with all of their power and bandwidth optimizations, setting aside servers to sit idle while others are being hammered. That's not how they do things. I was getting hicups and pauses on every video, even the most popular ones, videos that would have been streaming directly from RAM. That was at every resolution from 320 through 1080. These same videos load in seconds when avoiding the TWC <-> Google peering exchange points.

So while TWC customers tend to have it the worst, other customers see the same thing at times. This points back to the CDNs (or Google's network) being the bottleneck. If this was just TWC screwing around, Comcast users wouldn't periodically have problems, for example.

Not that TWC isn't scummy. They're just not the culprit in this case.

In any case, there's a good post over at Hacker News about why this is likely a problem over at Google.

Guys, some networking 101:

* The route your traffic takes to get from point a to point b depends on your network/ISP/etc

* The CDN you use when accessing YouTube, et. al. depends on the route you take. The first/nearest CDN to you is (usually, depending on the CDN owner's configuration) the one that will be used.

* The fact that a video loads quickly on one ISP and slowly on another means absolutely, completely, totally NOTHING in and of itself.

To find out if the ISP is to blame or not, you must attempt to access the same CDN server from two different ISPs and see if you get the same problem. The latency will be different, but unless there is a massive bandwidth or latency bottleneck between two hops along either route, the overall bandwidth (for a large enough file) should be sufficient to deduce whether or not the problem is with your ISP or the CDN servers corresponding to the route your ISP is taking to contact Google's servers (the results need to be statistically significant taking into account margin of error and network conditions).

If the CDN is the problem, unless the CDN is actually owned by your ISP, your ISP is not to blame.

In fact, for traditional non-net-neutral throttling, it does not matter which/how many CDN IPs you block. Your ISP should (if they're doing it right) detect your connection to YouTube's subnet and throttle your data rates regardless of which CDN you use. The CDNs in the original article belong to Google/YouTube, not TW. As such, TW would throttle your connection on the way to Google's subnet, not at Google's subnet. They have no control over Google's subnet. The hops past TW's (or whatever ISP you use) servers are not under their control, cannot be bandwidth-throttled by them, and have nothing to do with net neutrality.

The real explanation is most likely poorly-balanced CDN servers. i.e. the traffic going to the CDNs is unfairly skewed towards one or more CDN servers, causing them to serve content to all users of all networks more slowly. By explicitly avoiding said CDNs which are slow on Google's end, you will use a different, less-pounded CDN that can serve your content faster.

Note that I am not even a TW user (Comcast here), but this lynch mob is getting out of control. I expect a higher understanding of basic network principles when I browse HN, and "I can't load YouTube quickly so this means my ISP is shaping my bandwidth, and I need not look for actual evidence to support this claim" does not qualify as such.

That said, yes, it is possible for a cunning ISP to shape your traffic by purposely mis-directing CDN selection, for example, making it so that all their users end up at the same exit (slow) node when contacting a YouTube IP as such effectively YouTube into serving all their content to all the ISP's users from the same CDN node(s), resulting in poor connection. The way to test this would be to map out the routes for packets sent all over, and search for statistically-significant routing anomalies when attempting to pass packets on to Google's network from within a certain ISP.

The CDN you use is often selected off a DNS response for many networks. An easy way to select a different CDN (that may adversely affect your browsing speed due to geo-origination!) would be to use a different DNS server (make sure to flush the DNS cache in your OS and in your browser). This is why it's not advised to use non-ISP DNS such as Google DNS, OpenDNS, etc) unless they're both a) anycast (basically CDN for DNS, your DNS query will go to the nearest geographic location to you) and b) have enough servers distributed around the country so that your anycast DNS request will be resolved near you, so that the CDN based off of DNS will also be physically near you. You can use namebench [0] by Google to query the fastest DNS servers, typically faster means closer as hops then physical distance are the biggest factors in DNS speed, though a shitty DNS server will obviously skew those results.

 

[disappoint]

OK, not try to spread misinformation. I just noticed a few posts stating it made no difference for people on other ISP's. For some reason I thought the article specifically mentioned TWC.

I didn't imply you did so on purpose. Most misinformation is spread unknowingly.

The article did specifically mention TWC because that is the author's ISP.

 

[Anubis]

im on TWC and this didnt really do anything for me so i turned it off. also it broke something else

 

[DanTMWTMP]

hmm interesting thread. I'll have to try this out when I get home from work in a few weeks

 

[Lifted]

That's not traffic shaping though (at least not by any conventional definition). Traffic shaping is when you recognize the content by protocol or deep packet inspection, and then prioritize it based on that. If TW was traffic shaping then YouTube would be slow no matter the server, because they would always be detecting video traffic and deprioritizing it. What you're describing is an overloaded link, which is different.

Different content is accessible on different servers, thus different routes. Every video isn't stored in every CDN. Lately 100% of youtube videos for me have suffered pausing every 1 minute. You can't believe every server I hit for every video is the same group of overloaded servers. The only explanation is that TWC is routing all traffic to youtube over certain peering points they have with Google, and as I stated earlier, they are traffic shaping youtube contentor the links are saturated. I'm not sure why you think this isn't traffic shaping... Google serves more content than just youtube, and TWC is traffic shaping the youtube content. Google Maps, etc., are just fine.

So while TWC customers tend to have it the worst, other customers see the same thing at times.

And I have it bad 100% of the time when at home on TWC. The problem doesn't exist nearly as much when I use my phone for a connection (VZW), at work, at friends houses, etc.

This points back to the CDNs (or Google's network) being the bottleneck. If this was just TWC screwing around, Comcast users wouldn't periodically have problems, for example.

Everyone has periodic problems. I'm sure Comcast has their own peering issues with Google, they just aren't nearly as bad as TWC has been lately.

In any case, there's a good post over at Hacker News about why this is likely a problem over at Google.

The article is nothing but "networking 101" assumptions. There was no testing done, it's all hypothesis.

Here is testing:

6 18 ms 15 ms 15 ms ae-4-0.cr0.nyc30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.78]
7 20 ms 22 ms 23 ms ae-4-0.cr0.dca20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.28]
8 19 ms 18 ms 15 ms 66.109.1.47 <- Time Warner Cable
9 19 ms 38 ms 21 ms 74.125.49.181 <- Google
10 17 ms 18 ms 18 ms 209.85.252.80
11 20 ms 18 ms 18 ms 72.14.238.253
12 17 ms 17 ms 18 ms iad23s08-in-f2.1e100.net [74.125.228.98]

Now after avoiding the TWC peering routes, and hitting googles servers via XO Communications, the routes are still going through a peer between TWC -> XO, but the videos load almost instantly and play perfectly.

Does Google have an overloaded CDN on the east coast? It's possible. Is it likely that this overloaded CDN is just as bad on Sunday's at 5AM as it is on Wednesday's at 8PM, and has been like that for months, while CDN's elsewhere are snappy as can be? I'm not buying that Google would let something like that go on for months. They'd simply reroute to one of their other CDN's.

I'll check which servers I'm hitting from my VZW connection and from work, but I'd be surprised if at least some of them aren't in the same CDN/range as the ones I'm hitting from TWC.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Have lived in some places where i have had dsl and cable internet from 3mb all the way up to 20mb,youtube always buffered and stalled but currently living with 12mbps satellite and zero buffering issues and that is 1080p included.....:awe:

Hate and love this satellite,download faster then 20mb,ping out the ass meaning no gaming but i could watch a youtube video in 1080p without issue,while my old dsl isp ended up being the worst period,all youtube did was buffer.:|

 

[Wyndru]

VIRGE is right. This is only going to work as long as few people are doing it. If everyone did this the direct download servers will start to slow down as they get overwhelmed with too much traffic. Not to mention if your ISP starts throttling those servers next!

Yup, and it won't be long now that the instructions ended up on reddit. Expect this to stop working very soon.

[EDIT] Um yeah...my boss emailed me this a couple of minutes ago also haha. He wants me to test it and if it works write a script to push out to all of the computers in 2 school districts to do this, since we have had a lot of issues with teachers streaming youtube (even though our pipe is never anywhere near maxed).

So if it works, that will be another couple thousand computers hitting the direct servers in my area. I'm hesitant to waste my time, since I'm sure TWC or Google will soon find a way to prevent this from using too much bandwidth.

 

[Fritzo]

I'm on ATT DSL and never seem to have a problem with YouTube. Is this specific to cable connections?

 

[Triumph]

marked for home! can't stand how youtube doesn't let you pause and buffer the whole video anymore.

 

[Number1]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1axwab/you_tube_becoming_a_big_pos_load_times_are/c91qw0l

http://mitchribar.com/2013/02/how-to-stop-youtube-sucking-windows-guide/

The guy mentions TWC throttling, but some users said this works for verizon FIOS too... just tried with my optimum online connection and that works too! I just tried some 1080p videos on youtube... the dark night trailer is 2 minutes 30 seconds long and it fully loaded in like 15 seconds for me. Normally, when i do 1080p, i run the risk of buffering.

Tried it and ran into the dreaded buffering calamity. No effect here, removed.

 

[Nintendesert]

I'll go with Virge on this one and throw out the rest of you are fucking morons.

 

[rasczak]

marked and subscribed for later.

(on TWC)

 

[Jeffg010]

I'm on Fios and get the buffer will try this when I get home.

 

[TheVrolok]

Will try when I get home.