Are eircom throttling youtube

cantalach

Yes, I've been having the same problems for the last few weeks with YouTube and Vimeo.

• It is not a general download problem because a speed test reports oodles of bandwidth available and low latency.
• Both YouTube and Vimeo will very quickly buffer the first few seconds but then stall completely.
• However - and this is the crucial bit - if I bring up my VPN to work, the same clips play flawlessly. Note that our VPN routes everything through the VPN once it is up; not just traffic going to work.
• Everything points to Eircom throttling content from specific sites.
• FWIW, I am not an eFibre customer.

dalta5billion

We've been documenting this over here.

Eircom having major peak time congestion internationally.

_dof_

I just spotted the following response from eircom:
community.eircom.net/t5/Service-Updates-and/Response-to-customer-posts-on-recent-broadband-speeds-queries/m-p/83939#M229

Response to customer posts on recent broadband speeds queries - November Thursday 06 2014

To our customers

We are aware that recently some customers have reported difficulties with video streaming and accessing content from some sites hosted externally to our network, such as YouTube.com for example.

This is due in part to the huge growth in data volumes and data traffic that is transported over our network, which has exceeded our forecasted growth.

We are making a number of improvements to our international connectivity which will add significant capacity and this work should be completed in the next two or three weeks.

Many of you posting to this forum on this issue will see improvements as this work has completed. If you continue to have speed and have followed all troubleshooting procedures, you should call our tech support team on 1890260 260.


We will keep you posted on this issue here but if you have any queries on this, or any other issue please feel free to post us on the forum here, contact us on Twitter @eircom or call you can also chat with one of our online Chat agents at Eircom.ie.

Eircom Customer Care

evosteo

i was looking everywhere for answers to this it was driving me crazy. videos on facebook and youtube buffering like mad but speed test was showing me steady 50/15mb u/d. that stats for nerds option on youtube was saying my actual bitrate was only 1-2mb. suppose it makes sense it been an international problem. wonder what they think they can do to ease the issue? theres only so much fibre crossing the waters :eek: this just seems to be an evening peek time issue is that correct??? between about 6pm to about 11pm?

ED E

They can lease more bandwith. The Tier 1 providers may well have dark fibre/frequencies they arent using to lease still, I suspect they do.

CelticRambler

Didn't see this thread when it started, but FWIW, I'm a thousand km away from Eircom - different country, different network altogether - and my YouTube performance has taken a dive over the last few weeks, especially at around the same GMT times as you guys are reporting. To be fair to Eircom and all the other operators, I think there's just such a huge volume of junk being shifted around the 'net these days they're fighting a losing battle.

cantalach

_dof_ wrote: »

Response to customer posts on recent broadband speeds queries - November Thursday 06 2014

To our customers

[snip]

Eircom Customer Care

It's interesting to note that the spokesperson doesn't deny that they are throttling. I take this as implicit acknowledgement that they are.

Doodah7

cantalach wrote: »

It's interesting to note that the spokesperson doesn't deny that they are throttling. I take this as implicit acknowledgement that they are.

I don't think that is fair tbh. They have identified that there is an issue internationally with web traffic and that they are taking steps to ameliorate it. They don't address throttling as they say that this is not the issue. You can't therefore simply make a jump in logic then to say that they are engaging in such activities because they didn't address it!!

cantalach

tallpaul wrote: »

I don't think that is fair tbh. They have identified that there is an issue internationally with web traffic and that they are taking steps to ameliorate it. They don't address throttling as they say that this is not the issue. You can't therefore simply make a jump in logic then to say that they are engaging in such activities because they didn't address it!!

With the greatest of respect, I disagree. In my experience, when parsing the statements of big companies, it's as important to look at what they don't say as what they do. They acknowledge that there is a congestion problem with their international links. The most obvious way to ameliorate this temporarily - until they sort out the problem properly - is to throttle certain content types and/or sources. I wouldn't expect them to admit this, nor would I expect them to deny it.

If the problems were caused solely by congested international links and throttling was not being applied, I would expect that:

(a) The observed behaviour would be different. YouTube and Vimeo would play in spurts. But that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing the first couple of seconds play just fine and then a complete freeze-up.

(b) Playback through a VPN would also be affected. Just to reiterate what I said in my first post above, when I bring up my work VPN (which terminates in the western US and therefore presumably runs over the same congested international links), I can play full HD video flawlessly on YouTube and Vimeo.

ED E

Your logic is flawed, your VPN can route you in a totally different fashion avoiding the bottleneck. A great example is the L3/Cogent/Netflix spat where VPNs took a longer route but bypassed the congested points of presence.

Youtube will also load the first few seconds in low res then shift to 720/1080. This is probably the burst of playback you see.

cantalach

ED E wrote: »

Your logic is flawed, your VPN can route you in a totally different fashion avoiding the bottleneck. A great example is the L3/Cogent/Netflix spat where VPNs took a longer route but bypassed the congested points of presence.

Youtube will also load the first few seconds in low res then shift to 720/1080. This is probably the burst of playback you see.

Yep, fair enough on the VPN routing (that's why I said 'presumably'). Not convinced about the second point though. Doesn't look low res to me.

Whatever the cause, I just want it fixed.

logic

ED E wrote: »

Your logic is flawed, your VPN can route you in a totally different fashion avoiding the bottleneck. A great example is the L3/Cogent/Netflix spat where VPNs took a longer route but bypassed the congested points of presence.

Youtube will also load the first few seconds in low res then shift to 720/1080. This is probably the burst of playback you see.

Should it not be the case were a link is congested that traffic is then routed over non congested links? Albeit they might be slower but they would be fine for http traffic, no?

Spear

logic wrote: »

Should it not be the case were a link is congested that traffic is then routed over non congested links? Albeit they might be slower but they would be fine for http traffic, no?

That may also mean incurring increased transit costs instead, and given how cash strapped Eircom is, saturating a peering point is the lesser evil.

pH

cantalach wrote: »

(a) The observed behaviour would be different. YouTube and Vimeo would play in spurts. But that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing the first couple of seconds play just fine and then a complete freeze-up.

(b) Playback through a VPN would also be affected. Just to reiterate what I said in my first post above, when I bring up my work VPN (which terminates in the western US and therefore presumably runs over the same congested international links), I can play full HD video flawlessly on YouTube and Vimeo.

100% agree. But it is a little more complicated. I had an older NG broadband and I suffered 18 months of this problem - performance absolutely fine during the day, but around 630pm on weekdays it would just die for youtube and twitch. Browsing websites always seemed fine but the youtube problem was exactly as you described it a quick burst then immediately dropping to next to nothing.

But there didn't seem to be a general problem for all eircom users, I made many posts on boards and other places but it seemed I was alone or in a very small minority that was facing this issue.

After I upgraded to efibre it was fine for most of the summer, but now it's back with a vengeance. But when I posted here:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=92202325
on 15/9 there didn't seem to be anyone else in the same boat once again. As you can see my problem with unusable youtube/twitch started in August this year which means I have been unable to stream youtube in the evening for the best part of 3 months now - if this was a backhaul issue why are thread like this only appearing now?

Another thing I'd add is that the drop off in speed is quite abrupt, it doesn't feel like the back haul is getting busier and busier - youtube works fine in HD and it goes to barely working at 240p - all in about 5 minutes.

And like you - switching on my openvpn to a dutch server means I can watch youtube and twitch without any problems.

sparky63

Response on another thread.

http://community.eircom.net/t5/Service-Updates-and/Response-to-customer-posts-on-recent-broadband-speeds-queries/m-p/83939#M229

Spear

sparky63 wrote: »

Response on another thread.

http://community.eircom.net/t5/Service-Updates-and/Response-to-customer-posts-on-recent-broadband-speeds-queries/m-p/83939#M229

All of which aligns with saturated peering and the normal lead time to arrange an augment of peering capacity.

dalta5billion

Spear wrote: »

All of which aligns with saturated peering and the normal lead time to arrange an augment of peering capacity.

The agreement would include provisions requiring joint capacity and forecasting reviews on a periodic basis. The agreement would require that each 10 Gbps interconnection point (whether initially-deployed, relocated to correct a bit mileage discrepancy, or augmented based on increased volume) would have to have an agreed minimum utilization. The agreement will also include provisions obligating both parties to augment interconnection point capacity on a timely basis when and as traffic meets specified thresholds. Other standard terms will be included in the settlement-free peering agreement negotiated between the parties.

From Level3's Settlement-Free peering guidelines (although Eircom probably pay Level3). This should have been sending off alarm bells weeks ago.

How Level3 and ISPs interact regarding congestion: http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/when-the-middleman-and-isp-are-aligned/

And why this should have been caught a long time ago:
http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-internet-middleman/

Spear

dalta5billion wrote: »

From Level3's Settlement-Free peering guidelines (although Eircom probably pay Level3). This should have been sending off alarm bells weeks ago.

How Level3 and ISPs interact regarding congestion: http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/when-the-middleman-and-isp-are-aligned/

And why this should have been caught a long time ago:
http://blog.level3.com/open-internet/observations-internet-middleman/

And since a tier 1 like Level3 would never refuse an opportunity to improvement peering capacity, you can draw your own conclusions from this.