Is your ISP throttling your YouTube connection?

I have a 20mbps connection and while it certainly isn't anywhere near the fastest in the world, it should certainly be more than adequate for streaming 1080p videos without any hiccups. Over the last few months I've noticed that YouTube videos are performing dreadfully for me. Even at 480p and 720p, they're stopping and starting. Sometimes I just have to give up and let it load fully before attempting to watch it. 

At first I thought it might be the case that Google had reduced the available bandwidth available to YouTube. But now after reading a lot of discussions on forums (including Google's own help forum) involving a ton of people who have been experiencing exactly the same, I'm beginning to suspect that the real culprit might be my ISP (in this case, Time Warner Cable). It's certainly within their power to limit my download speed when connected to certain sites, and it's certainly plausible that they are now taking measures to deal with the explosion in bandwidth use over the last couple of years. Why pay to upgrade their networks, when they can simply restrict bandwidth to the popular sites which are sucking the most bandwidth? YouTube would be first on the chopping block, obviously. But I've also noticed more buffering in Netflix, and sometimes Spotify too. 

Someone on a Google forum said that they completely fixed the problem by setting up a VPN, which enables them to connect to YouTube without their ISP knowing what site they're using. Not sure how this works to be honest. 

Another thing I've noticed is that when I use Spotify on my iPhone, it will stream music perfectly for about 15 minutes, then it will just stop. The connection is still strong, and I can download web pages and use Facebook,  but I can't use Spotify again until I put it into airplane mode for a while and reconnect. I'm grandfathered into an unlimited download deal, and I suspect that my phone company (AT&T) is doing what it can to stifle the liberal data use of pesky customers like me.

Thoughts? 

I've been getting some strange things like that as well. Down to 23kb/s here

Ya, I was watching Sheep In Bikinis last night and it kept starting and stopping and rewinding and starting...
(Or was that me?)

We tried to watch an episode of a series we have been in to lately on Amazon Prime tonight, wouldn't work. Went in to eternal buffer state.

So here I am.

They better get it fixed soon eh?

sharke

I don't know why they don't just charge an extra few dollars to people who go over a certain limit. It doesn't seem fair that someone like me, who watches the occasional show on Netflix and a few YouTube videos, should be penalized because of the people who spend every evening streaming movies non-stop while having 20 Torrents on the go.

That never works.

For example ... when the guy was here hooking us up, he tried diligently to talk me in to the 1Mb plan. He said their network was so fast that 1Mb would be more than enough on their network to stream Netflix on one TV, surf the net on a PC, and use Vonage, all at the same time.

Of course, being around the block a few times, I didn't believe him, and told him I would be a heavy user and insisted he set me up with a 3Mb plan. Still slow by today's comparison, but fast for out here in the sticks, and faster than anything I've ever had.

Worked great for a couple months ... then slower, then slower, then slower. Called and complained because we were totally down 10 times. They said someone from the U.K. was doing a DoS attack on one of the three users on my section of the network and it shut the entire network down.

I don't consider myself a heavy user. I watch 2, maybe 3 standard definition shows a night on Amazon Prime, and during the day I just hang out here on the forum, and watch maybe 10 youtube video's a week. Long story short ... I paid extra for a faster connection because I considered that being a heavy user and I'm still getting crap service now, just like I would have got with the 1Mb connection. And I paid a year in advance ... and have it in writing that they will never throttle my connection down.

Bub

sharke

I don't know why they don't just charge an extra few dollars to people who go over a certain limit. It doesn't seem fair that someone like me, who watches the occasional show on Netflix and a few YouTube videos, should be penalized because of the people who spend every evening streaming movies non-stop while having 20 Torrents on the go.

That never works.

For example ... when the guy was here hooking us up, he tried diligently to talk me in to the 1Mb plan. He said their network was so fast that 1Mb would be more than enough on their network to stream Netflix on one TV, surf the net on a PC, and use Vonage, all at the same time.

Of course, being around the block a few times, I didn't believe him, and told him I would be a heavy user and insisted he set me up with a 3Mb plan. Still slow by today's comparison, but fast for out here in the sticks, and faster than anything I've ever had.

Worked great for a couple months ... then slower, then slower, then slower. Called and complained because we were totally down 10 times. They said someone from the U.K. was doing a DoS attack on one of the three users on my section of the network and it shut the entire network down.

I don't consider myself a heavy user. I watch 2, maybe 3 standard definition shows a night on Amazon Prime, and during the day I just hang out here on the forum, and watch maybe 10 youtube video's a week. Long story short ... I paid extra for a faster connection because I considered that being a heavy user and I'm still getting crap service now, just like I would have got with the 1Mb connection. And I paid a year in advance ... and have it in writing that they will never throttle my connection down.

I pay extra for "Turbo" Roadrunner and while these online "speed tests" always show a speed of around 18-20mbps, I'm obviously not getting that when browsing sites. In fact it feels no faster than the Earthlink connection I had 5 years ago. Not only that but my monthly fee has gone up from around $48/month to $62/month. First of all they started charging $4/month for "modem rental" last year (a BS charge if I ever heard one), and then apparently some various "discounts" that they've been giving me before have expired, hence an increase of almost $15/month. And this, for a service which is getting worse and worse. They didn't even bother sending me notification of any increases, except the modem rental fee. 


I've also had shutdowns on a regular basis over the last 7 years. It just goes off. Sometimes it comes back on the next morning, other times I've had to wait 4-5 days for a technician to stop by. One time, they sent over this thug moron who told me that it was my computer which was at fault. I pointed out that I have a desktop and 2 laptops and they all have the same problem. He got right in my face, snorted, and said "are you calling me a liar? Are you saying I don't know what I'm talking about"? Luckily he was about 2 feet away from my open apartment door, so I pushed him hard and then slammed the door in his face. He kicked the door, yelled a racial epithet, and that was that. Time Warner Cable New York FTW!

Bub

zungle

Well.............

I too was having major hiccups with "You Tube"...... Using "Chrome "

I'm having problems with U-Toob in FF and IE also, but ... I do have Chrome installed, although I don't use it.

I should try getting rid of it and flushing my registry.

I wish there was a browser you could run stand alone without installing it.

Reaper can be run that way, PeaZip can too (PeaZip is a free ZIP program. It also lets you mount, extract, and edit, ISO files.)

You can get a standalone version of Firefox that can be run from a USB stick. 


http://portableapps.com/a...ernet/firefox_portable

Beepster


I read something recently (maybe here) about how google is trying to deliver "the best quality their servers can handle". Essentially what is happening is that when their servers are experiencing high demand they switch your streaming vid to lower quality to keep buffering down to a minimum. I think it's the constantly switching back and forth between stream quality that's causing hiccups. I've noticed it lately myself and have resorted to clicking on the Settings button on the playback bar and choosing a lower setting. You'll notice it says "Auto" in that list. The auto seems to be what makes it flop around between qualities. Even if I have it set to a lower quality and that auto thing is engaged it'll still hiccup. It's Google yet again being "helpful" with their new youtube acquisition. It is really annoying.

The reasoning is that people are so damned impatient these days that if a vid doesn't load instantly they navigate away to something else. I'll see if I can dig up the article.

That's not to say your ISP isn't throttling your bandwidth. That's another pile of annoyance. My new ISP is much better than my old one in that regard though. The last place I was at was fine until about 5pm-11pm. Trying to watch a vid on anything other than youtube during those hours was infuriating. What would usually take a minute to load would take 20 minutes and half to time drop out. None of that here thank goodness. The funny thing is my connection is supposedly SLOWER than in the old place.

That's certainly a plausible explanation and I will try adjusting my settings, but at the same time I did read someone on another forum say that when they set up a VPN, the problem disappeared, and since then other people have chimed in to say that it worked for them too. 


Regardless, I think sooner or later the ISP's are going to have to come to terms with the fact that they need to invest more money in upgrading their networks to handle today's bandwidth demand. They're still cruising along like it's 1998. 

Well whatever they're doing, it's not working very well!

I have noticed some slow down but not too much. Most of the time the videos play OK. I am on Comcast... but I think it might be different in different neighborhoods. There are a LOT of connections and other stuff they have to maintain. I had a lot more problems where I used to live, here it is mostly the crappy DVRs that need to be replaced about once a year.

J

I tend to use something like YouTube Downloader first then watch it from my harddrive and delete it afterwards.