You Tube Problem

Thomas Alan

Thomas Alan

The Living Force
When I am watching videos on You Tube the video is playing faster than it is being loaded. So the play stops every 30 seconds or so the load can catch up. This problem is recent, just the past few weeks.

Interestingly, when I watch a video on another site, for instance SOTT, this doesn't happen. But if I go to the identical video on You Tube the loading problem occurs.

I don't see a slowing of my internet speed as a whole.

Any thoughts?

Mac
 
Hi Mac

can you please run a speed test an paste an output here ? Without IP addresses !!


__http://www.speedtest.net/

You might not notice a speed change in your connection because you ISP may have a proxy server. But with streaming stuff like flash vid you may see a difference.
That is one of many possibilities.
 
drygol said:
Hi Mac

can you please run a speed test an paste an output here ? Without IP addresses !!


__http://www.speedtest.net/

You might not notice a speed change in your connection because you ISP may have a proxy server. But with streaming stuff like flash vid you may see a difference.
That is one of many possibilities.
Click to expand...

Download: 20.05 Mb/s
UpLoad : .39 Mb/s
Ping : 93 ms

Mac
 
Thats weird :huh:

Usually broadband ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line - I assumed you have that one) has different speed rates.
So looks like you have totally different kind of ISP.
What is it ? Cable internet ?
Also are these rates that you pasted comply with your agreement with ISP ?
 
drygol said:
Thats weird :huh:

Usually broadband ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line - I assumed you have that one) has different speed rates.
So looks like you have totally different kind of ISP.
What is it ? Cable internet ?
Also are these rates that you pasted comply with your agreement with ISP ?
Click to expand...

It's cable internet. I'll see if I can find out what the agreement rates are.
I've thought about up grading my system memory. Would that help? I have about a 4 year old Dell with 2 gig Ram. It has an open slot so could take to 4 gig with out much cost.

Mac
 
I don't think you'll find that your memory or CPU are the bottleneck, otherwise you'd probably find problems with video playback in a lot of situations (2 gig RAM sounds ample for most online stuff). Also, the problem you described does sound like download speed is more likely the issue. Assuming you've tried other video sources, streaming and local, and found no observable problems, have you considered that your ISP may be throttling YouTube?
 
I have very fast cable broadband and I noticed youtube doing this sometimes. Youtube stores videos on many servers, some of them slower than others, among other factors that could make a youtube server slow. Often changing the video quality can fix it (for those videos that have multiple quality settings like 320p and 480p), since the different versions of the video are often stored on different servers and load at completely different speeds because of that. Other times just refreshing it does the trick - I'm not sure why that works, but I suppose they could have the same video on multiple servers and which one you're pulling it from can change from one moment to the next depending on "load balancing" and other internet traffic conditions.
 
Ok I have more data now :)
It basically looks like your PC`s are going through a so called proxy service like Squid for example.

__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_(software)

This means that your browser is not connecting to a website directly but through this proxy server. Proxy in turn caches all pages that are requested through it so if for example 10 people (same ISP network) go to the same website
, it will take longer for first one to download a website and after a website is cached , it will be way faster for remaining 9 people to get it. Err sorry for this sentence but I hope you get a picture :D

However there are few security issues with proxies. Whether you like it or not , all HTTP (very often more protocols) traffic is being stored on that proxy , for caching , so in any moment this data could be browsed and tracked.
Thats why it is important to use HTTPS more often (it is not a perfect solution thou , it may be fooled too).

RAM upgrade won't help. People are so used to upgrades these days that they tend to forget how it worked few years back :D. 512 MB of RAM would be more that enough and you still have 2048 MB

I may be wrong since I am not at your PC and I cannot use my tools , but it looks like it is indeed ISP/Proxy issue.Thats why , like SAO said, changing resolution of vid helps sometimes - because it has been cached(or has not - depends on a proxy problem)
Try connecting through VPN service if you have one, just to check if it all works there. All traffic will be encrypted and it will go through a different TCP port so your ISP will be unable to route it through a proxy.

Also there are tons of other possibilities but I am afraid it will be hard to diagnose it remotely.
 
drygol said:
Ok I have more data now :)
It basically looks like your PC`s are going through a so called proxy service like Squid for example.

__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_(software)

This means that your browser is not connecting to a website directly but through this proxy server. Proxy in turn caches all pages that are requested through it so if for example 10 people (same ISP network) go to the same website
, it will take longer for first one to download a website and after a website is cached , it will be way faster for remaining 9 people to get it. Err sorry for this sentence but I hope you get a picture :D

However there are few security issues with proxies. Whether you like it or not , all HTTP (very often more protocols) traffic is being stored on that proxy , for caching , so in any moment this data could be browsed and tracked.
Thats why it is important to use HTTPS more often (it is not a perfect solution thou , it may be fooled too).

RAM upgrade won't help. People are so used to upgrades these days that they tend to forget how it worked few years back :D. 512 MB of RAM would be more that enough and you still have 2048 MB

I may be wrong since I am not at your PC and I cannot use my tools , but it looks like it is indeed ISP/Proxy issue.Thats why , like SAO said, changing resolution of vid helps sometimes - because it has been cached(or has not - depends on a proxy problem)
Try connecting through VPN service if you have one, just to check if it all works there. All traffic will be encrypted and it will go through a different TCP port so your ISP will be unable to route it through a proxy.

Also there are tons of other possibilities but I am afraid it will be hard to diagnose it remotely.
Click to expand...

Ok, I installed a VPN and it does seem to help. You Tube vids load just fine. Are you saying that I should not use the VPN all the time? Because of security issues? Just want to make sure I understand.

Mac
 
no no :)
VPN is just fine !
Depending on a configuration (there are tens of VPN services along with software), it will encrypt all your traffic. It will protect you from most of MiTM attacks (Man In The Middle) which could be launched in your local network , plus it will give you few more advantages.
If it does not cost you much , keep using VPN.

sorry for the delay , I wasn't using PC that much for past few days
 
drygol said:
no no :)
VPN is just fine !
Depending on a configuration (there are tens of VPN services along with software), it will encrypt all your traffic. It will protect you from most of MiTM attacks (Man In The Middle) which could be launched in your local network , plus it will give you few more advantages.
If it does not cost you much , keep using VPN.

sorry for the delay , I wasn't using PC that much for past few days
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks drygol:

Mac
 
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