4 ms·

The YouTube cache is probably there not to increase performance for you, but to reduce ISP cost (ISP pays for all data received from outside of their network)

• oasisbob 9y ago
  That's a strange way of looking at it. ISPs take all sorts of actions to both increase performance to customers, and to reduce their costs. A competent ISP operating in good faith will execute and expand peering agreements when it makes economic sense to do so.
  • Sohcahtoa82 9y ago
    > A competent ISP operating in good faith That's probably the funniest thing I've read all year
  • takeda 9y ago
    An ISPs #1 goal is to generate money. When there's a competition this often equates with making customers happy so they will stick with the ISP and perhaps more will switch from competitors. When there's no competition and customers have no choice who to use it's purely all about squeezing as much money as they can. This means raising prices for the service and reducing cost by paying less to others services even if it would reduce quality of service. The goal is to have service that's good enough to keep people still use them (I mean there is price point and/or quality that people would just not to have service at all). If a specific action that ISP with monopoly does and it improves quality for customer that's just a coincidence.
• dx034 9y ago
  Even for data not delivered via their cache they'll get free peering with Google. But having cache servers at several locations reduces the capacity they need to peering points. E.g. in the UK, most traffic gets peered in London so having cache servers in Northern England reduces the bandwidth they need for their internal network within the country. I don't think ISPs pay much for peering in Europe.