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Bandwidth throttling on Youtube and Vimeo with Time Warner Cable

philososaurmedia philososaurmedia·6 videos
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Published on Nov 20, 2012

A test where one Youtube HD video and one Vimeo HD video were loaded with two different internet connections ( bench marking the connections using speedtest.net before the tests )

One connection was a Time Warner Cable Internet service rated for 30Mbps down, 5Mpbs up. These speeds were verified by speedtest.net. I can also verify these speeds are consistent based on things I do like download large games from Steam.

The other connection was a Verizon 4G iPhone set up as a Personal Hot Spot. LTE bandwidth in my home ranges from 15-40Mbps down and 4-25Mbps up whenever I do speed tests.

I need to make some clarification about what I mean by Time Warner "Throttling" bandwidth. Time Warner isn't throttling my home internet connection. If they were, I wouldn't be able to achieve the 30/5 Mbit speed I showed in the video. Instead, they are either throttling the bandwidth from the caching servers their customers are routed to or the caching servers are congested beyond their capacity. Either way, Time Warner has a responsibility to their customers to address these issues.

Google doesn't own the servers that predominantly serve up video to Time Warner customers. Google has a caching and peering network that allows traffic to be routed to servers that are considered "ideal" for the viewer of the video. The viewer's internet provider, geographic location, and DNS server are all taken into account in this selection. Unfortunately, Google's peering agreements allow ISP's to direct YouTube traffic to servers they own or lease to cut down on their bandwidth overhead costs. YouTube also builds in throttling algorithms into the video player itself to help alleviate congestion. For example, if you pause a video, you may notice that it stops loading until you press play again. Things like this are done so that the server doesn't waste a bunch of bandwidth serving up a huge video file that someone may only watch the first few seconds of. Unfortunately, this kind of thing prevents you from pausing the video and waiting for it to load. The video will only load when it is being played, and since it is loading slower than it is playing, it's virtually unwatchable.

Caching servers, peering networks, CDN's and etc. are useful and important aspects of the internet. It wouldn't be feasible for a site like YouTube to exist without them.

It is Time Warner's responsibility, however, to ensure the quality and integrity of the routing and content caching servers they have influence over for a website like YouTube. When your internet service provider has an incentive to route traffic in a way that maximizes their dollar earned, you can assume they aren't going to invest money in servers and infrastructure until they have to.

Many users have complained about the same issues on Time Warner, and someone else actually helped me discover the IP range of the caching servers are the culprit of these problems. I'm still investigating, but I believe that Time Warner owns or leases these caching servers, and are responsible for not scaling them adequately to handle the demand of their customers.

I will be posting a follow-up video explaining how to block these servers using your router or computer's firewall. When the YouTube player realizes you can't connect to the server it routes you to, it will fall back to its own network and servers. The reason why the YouTube video loaded so quickly in the Verizon 4G test is that the video was loaded directly from a YouTube server.

You can actually see what server Youtube will serve you video from by going to: http://redirector.c.youtube.com/repor...

I have no idea how to resolve the results of that tool to an actual IP address or anything yet.

Reference info:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/co...
https://peering.google.com/about/faq....
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~viadhi/r...

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Top Comments

  • iAmRabid

    iAmRabid 1 month ago

    Then you're retarded. Anything under 80 is great.

    · 42

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    in reply to jaredanson123 (Show the comment)
  • LordCustos3

    LordCustos3 1 month ago

    I found a couple hints from folks who licked this problem.

    Here are two IP addresses you can block at the firewall ('206.111.0.0' and '173.194.55.0'); doing so, apparently, interferes with TWC's interfering with you. Ever since I added those two IPs to my blocklist, Youtube vids don't stall or choke anymore.

    Granted, YMMV. Try it out.

    If if works, let everyone else know.

    · 22

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All Comments (335)

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  • Travisplo1

    Travisplo1 4 days ago

    Wow, first one's 15 second is less than 0.25!

    ·

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  • st3ady

    st3ady 5 days ago

    i notice this too, its all a scam by the big corporations -_-;

    ·

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    in reply to zoemayne (Show the comment)
  • Robindahoodz

    Robindahoodz 1 week ago

    tards who watch this video obviously have no knowledge in computer science. Your "ping" or whatever it is you hipsters call it depends on WHICH SERVER YOU PICK to download and uplaod from. Ping and download speeds dont matter, you have everything you need on your freakin command prompt to test any connection or get a good idea instead of having to visit some site that you understand nothing about...

    ·

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  • Draggyish

    Draggyish 1 week ago

    Watching this after doing the fix, wow what a difference. And what a rip off by ISPs!

    ·

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  • battman37148

    battman37148 1 week ago

    I swear, Comcast does the same shit.

    ·

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  • druidimos

    druidimos 1 week ago

    The irony is that i am stalling to see this video :p

    · 3

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  • Matthew Clay

    Matthew Clay 1 week ago

    Ironically I couldn't load this video enough to watch it! I really need to wire my internet, because my download is supposed to be 157 mb/s but I only get 13.

    ·

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  • zoemayne

    zoemayne 1 week ago

    And notice how the VEVO(which is probably owned by viacom or TW) always loads the entire video in a second

    · 2

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  • silver350z94

    silver350z94 1 week ago

    If u come across the twc ceo i will sock him the face! This is bulkshit! They even give yiu a locked router

    ·

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