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My ISP doesn't throttle, which is entirely why I picked them. I have access to a connection that downloads 20 megabytes per second from S3, and YouTube still b

My ISP doesn't throttle, which is entirely why I picked them. I have access to a connection that downloads 20 megabytes per second from S3, and YouTube still buffers on that connection. Note that Vimeo doesn't buffer, and Vimeo has higher video quality usually. Also Netflix doesn't buffer. YouTube has been getting worse with time rather than better. Tons of ads and slow video. The issue is definitely on the YouTube end, and I'm not the first person to notice it.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Good question. I don't know. But I'll share a bit of speculation and you can tell me if there are holes in my reasoning. With out going into specifics there was a lot of effort at Google going into pushing 'popular' videos closer to the likely place they were going to be played. Any caching system or content delivery system, is by definition limited to the amount of edge cache it has and its ability to predict where that content will be. One of things putting pressure on that cache is probably Google's efforts to put 'premium' content near possible subscribers. Clearly people who are paying money have a higher expection of people randomly watching the latest cat pratfall. So if you're Google and you're doing more "TV" like things, you may have reasons to reserve some of that cache space for your premium content whether or not folks have asked for it from that part of the network 'yet.' Another interesting area is in transit networks. Generally the tier-1 networks who provide peering connections have done that on a quid pro quo basis (basically I'll peer your traffic if you'll peer mine). However as web 2.0 companies like Google or NetFlix start creating very large flows, suddenly if you are 'peering' and your peer is putting a LOT of traffic on your fiber but you have relatively little for their fiber, then maybe you start thinking you want to be compensated for that. We talked about Level 3 and Comcast going at it in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954077 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954077 So an explanation might be that your transit network is 'throttling' its peering relationship. I could easily see someone agreeing to 'peering' terms where they take the traffic they've sent and use that as a 'credit' and provide full rate service for an equivalent amount of traffic coming from the peer, but excess traffic might get throttled rather than being 'free.' This is a very active discussion in some circles. I would not be surprised to see it come up in any discussion of throughput to 'YouTube' vs local throughput.
temp7266 15y ago
> My ISP doesn't throttle That doesn't mean that they have infinite pipes to Google's edge caches, though (you're not exactly the only one pulling data through those pipes :-). Or that they're even pulling their data through the right pipes. I suggest talking to your ISP. If enough users complain to them, and the problem isn't in their network, they'll complain to Google.
- irq 15y ago
  It's not just one ISP. I've seen the behavior described by the parent from multiple ISPs in separate countries. It's been driving me nuts for so long that I started collecting information about the connections I've seen it from. Years ago, on 512kbit DSL, it was MUCH better. PAETEC DS3 (45Mbit/s) in San Diego, CA Time Warner cable modem in San Diego, CA (20Mbit/s) Colocation at AmericanIS.net (1Gbit/s via Level3.net) in San Diego, CA Videotron DSL in Montreal, QC (10Mbit/s) Teksavvy DSL in Montreal, QC (10Mbit/s) AT&T 3G in San Diego, Detroit, Atlanta (varies) Verizon 3G in San Diego (varies) Rogers 3G in Montreal, QC (varies)

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Good question. I don't know. But I'll share a bit of speculation and you can tell me if there are holes in my reasoning. With out going into specifics there was a lot of effort at Google going into pushing 'popular' videos closer to the likely place they were going to be played. Any caching system or content delivery system, is by definition limited to the amount of edge cache it has and its ability to predict where that content will be. One of things putting pressure on that cache is probably Google's efforts to put 'premium' content near possible subscribers. Clearly people who are paying money have a higher expection of people randomly watching the latest cat pratfall. So if you're Google and you're doing more "TV" like things, you may have reasons to reserve some of that cache space for your premium content whether or not folks have asked for it from that part of the network 'yet.' Another interesting area is in transit networks. Generally the tier-1 networks who provide peering connections have done that on a quid pro quo basis (basically I'll peer your traffic if you'll peer mine). However as web 2.0 companies like Google or NetFlix start creating very large flows, suddenly if you are 'peering' and your peer is putting a LOT of traffic on your fiber but you have relatively little for their fiber, then maybe you start thinking you want to be compensated for that. We talked about Level 3 and Comcast going at it in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954077 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954077 So an explanation might be that your transit network is 'throttling' its peering relationship. I could easily see someone agreeing to 'peering' terms where they take the traffic they've sent and use that as a 'credit' and provide full rate service for an equivalent amount of traffic coming from the peer, but excess traffic might get throttled rather than being 'free.' This is a very active discussion in some circles. I would not be surprised to see it come up in any discussion of throughput to 'YouTube' vs local throughput.

temp7266 15y ago

> My ISP doesn't throttle That doesn't mean that they have infinite pipes to Google's edge caches, though (you're not exactly the only one pulling data through those pipes :-). Or that they're even pulling their data through the right pipes. I suggest talking to your ISP. If enough users complain to them, and the problem isn't in their network, they'll complain to Google.

irq 15y ago
It's not just one ISP. I've seen the behavior described by the parent from multiple ISPs in separate countries. It's been driving me nuts for so long that I started collecting information about the connections I've seen it from. Years ago, on 512kbit DSL, it was MUCH better. PAETEC DS3 (45Mbit/s) in San Diego, CA Time Warner cable modem in San Diego, CA (20Mbit/s) Colocation at AmericanIS.net (1Gbit/s via Level3.net) in San Diego, CA Videotron DSL in Montreal, QC (10Mbit/s) Teksavvy DSL in Montreal, QC (10Mbit/s) AT&T 3G in San Diego, Detroit, Atlanta (varies) Verizon 3G in San Diego (varies) Rogers 3G in Montreal, QC (varies)