Poor youtube playback - UPC

Youtube has been fine for me but this morning I went to watch a video and it was rubbish. It's been the same all day.

Might be a problem with UPC and Google's peering... I'm sure they'll sort it.

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I had the same problem but it was with Smart. Turned out to be a problem on their end as even google.com would struggle to load sometimes. If enough people complain to them maybe they will look into it.

if you think about it, youtube must have thousands of servers globally, hosting billions of video's through hundreds of connections to the net, all working together to bring the people what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, along with millions of video's that will only ever be watched a few times, and i imagine that it's next to impossible to make sure all the right video's are available to all the right people in the right places at the right time without some of them getting caught buffering either due to not being immediately available to someone who wants it on a fast server with a good net connection that isn't over-utilised.

the solution? tabbed browsing.

oh, and get yourself a nice browser like firefox or chrome and an addon or two like "Stop Autoplay for YouTube" or "SmartVideo For YouTube" that will allow you to customise how your video's are buffered and/or automatically choose your preferred resolution and notify you when a video is buffered and other options to minimise your viewing disruption.

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All the above mentioned ISPs have private peering with Google in Dublin.

wallym wrote: »

I'm on 50mb and cant watch youtube, was on vodafone and even with less than 1mb( faulty exchange according to them!) it was fine, expected a lot more from UPC. Finish this contract and then try next service provider... a real pain!

you'd rather go through the hassle of upping sticks to another provider than actually contacting someone who might be able to do something about it and seeing if it's something simple that can be fixed?

My 3 Mbps Eircom connection performed better for YouTube than this 25 Mbps UPC connection! Very hit and miss.

mark17j wrote: »

your problem is wireless interference from neighboring routers.
Assuming u have the cisco ep2425 [url]Http://192.168.1.1[/url] "Set Up" under wireless click "Basic" change to channel 11, that's the one I use with no issues.

not necessarily, it could be more or less anything and how do you know that his next door neighbours either side of him aren't already using channel 11?

do a speedtest on www.speedtest.net and if you can get a decent speed there, youtube shouldn't be buffering.

as a (very) rough guide, 3mbps should comfortably get you 720p video on youtube without any issues. you can right click on any youtube video and choose "show video info" to see what the transfer rate is and other relevant statistics about the stream.

also, you can check your youtube speed history here: http://www.youtube.com/my_speed

if you are having speed issues on speed tests as well, then it *could* be wireless interference. the only way to rule it out completely is to test again via a wired connection.

if that sorts the problem THEN it's time to change your wireless channel, but randomly changing it to various arbitrary channels and hoping it works, then re-testing each time is going to take quite a bit of time if you live in a busy residential area.

download and install inSSIDer and do a walkaround your house with your laptop running it and you will see a graph showing you all the wireless networks in your vecinity, which channels they are using and which of those channels overlap with yours. any overlap is going to be eating into your own wireless signal to some extent, the more there are, the worse it could be.

the solution is to find a wireless channel with the least interference from neighbouring channels, which you will be able to see from your wireless survey with inSSIDer. i'd recommend walking round your place and going to every window (upstairs and down if you have them) and hanging there for a minute or two just to see what pops up.

once you've done that, you should hopefully be sorted.

if you're still not sorted then it's time to call UPC. collect as much info as you can to send off to them. reboot your router, do lots of testing at various times of the day and night and make a log of the tests you do to give them a clearer picture of the issues. the more they know about the issue, the more likely they are to be able to find a solution.

I'm having the same problem with Youtube and UPC the last few days.

It's really odd as I can stream HD video from Netflix perfectly.

mark17j wrote: »

youtube issues here the last few days on (UPC broadband), constant buffering with 720p and 1080p vids - checked my download speeds and all seems good, all other sites running fine for me.
Anybody experiencing similar lately with youtube?

Yep, mine is the same for the past few weeks. Vids won't buffer more than a few seconds ahead no matter how long I leave them even on standard quality. If I try and skip ahead it takes a while to buffer and start. Very annoying and only youtube. Also can't watch any embedded vids on sites, have to go to the full site for the vid to load up.