Vodafone throttling access to Youtube?

MichealKenny

Hi guys, so I have noticed Youtube being a bit slow over the past few days, so I open up the stream statistics and I see this:




My connection speed to the server is 1033Kbps even though I am getting my regular 5-6Mbps on other services. I feel the connection speed is too close to a round number to not be throttling, so I do an IP whois on the stream host:



Vodafone operates this particular Youtube server. So I create a firewall rule to drop all packets to the address of that server, but Youtube just stopped working. So instead I create a few NAT rules to simply forward requests for the Vodafone Youtube server, to a Youtube server directly operated by Google, and this is the result:



My regular speed.


I feel that the connection speed being bang on 1Mbps 24/7 means that this is probably throttling as opposed to congestion. What do you guys think?

PS: The screenshots use different videos, but in actual testing I used the same video, browser, & PC.

ED E

Are you on 3/4G? If so then its normal. They're operating a "Mobile" CDN node to serve handsets lower bitrate video.

A while back UPC did a similar thing with routing to a set of mobile servers on a fixed line service.

MichealKenny

Nope, ADSL1

ED E

Cheeky messing so.

Easy enough to fix it but the vast majority of their user base will never really know whats up.

editorsean

I have noticed something similar with YouTube before I left Vodafone a month ago. The DSL connection I had was also ADSL1, synced at 5120Kbps down / 384Kbps up.

While I never thought of checking what IP address YouTube was connecting to, there were some videos where I could not play in 720p as it would just keep buffering every few seconds.

With me, it seemed to be hit & miss where some videos would show around 3900Kbps (matching up with my usual speed test) and others would be fixed around a much smaller figure such as 1200Kbps, even though a speed test would should show 3.9Mbps immediately after watching the video. Yet when I connected my 3G modem (Meteor prepay at the time), the affected videos would stream at full speed at around 10,000Kbps.

Since switching our phone/broadband package to Digiweb, I haven't noticed any videos struggling to play in 720p over its DSL connection even though the DSL downlink still syncs at 5120Kbps. So I wouldn't be surprised if I had that similar issue above with Vodafone.

Indeed that is sneaky. I wonder if using an alternative DNS such as Google's DNS would result in YouTube choosing Google's own CDN servers.

Vico1612

Interesting as I'm seeing the same issue since last week . I'm on VDSL , all sites work fine except youtube streaming ( takes ages for Videos to load ) .
I'll do more digging around.

irishgeo

Someone should post this on the talk to Vodafone forum.

bambam

I noticed the same last night. Speedtest showed 90Mb with 30ms ping.
But 720p youtube videos were stuttering with YT connection speed 3500Kbps. Same videos this morning are fine at 1080p @ 5000kbps
Also, I just noticed that Chrome has connection speed this morning is around 10000Kbps, whereas my previous testing was on Safari

Vico1612

irishgeo wrote: »

Someone should post this on the talk to Vodafone forum.

Done
Feel free to chime in on http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057578826

editorsean

I think I found out a temporary workaround, although I no longer have a Vodafone DSL connection to test with.

From checking my Digiweb DSL connection, Digiweb also operates a CDN which YouTube connects to. When I block the hosts it connects to using the Windows hosts file, it then plays from a Google CDN. So in theory this should work with Vodafone also.

Each video takes roughly 15 seconds to start due to it unsuccessfully trying to connect to the invalid IP address. However, if it means being able to play it in 1080p, at least it'll a good trade-off from watching a spinning wheel every few seconds.

I'm basing the following on the stream host info from MichealKenny's screenshot above, so this may not work if Vodafone uses multiple CDNs, e.g. one for DSL, another for VDSL, etc.

1. Find Notepad in the start menu (Windows 10: Start -> All Apps -> Windows accessories), right-click it and Run as Administrator (in "More" submenu in Windows 10)
2. Go into File -> Open
3. In the File name field, enter the following and click 'Open': %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
4. Add the following 5 lines at the bottom:
   
   0.0.0.0 r1---sn-8vq54voxpx-q0cl.googlevideo.com
   0.0.0.0 r2---sn-8vq54voxpx-q0cl.googlevideo.com
   0.0.0.0 r3---sn-8vq54voxpx-q0cl.googlevideo.com
   0.0.0.0 r4---sn-8vq54voxpx-q0cl.googlevideo.com
   0.0.0.0 r5---sn-8vq54voxpx-q0cl.googlevideo.com
   
5. Save this change.
6. Press the Windows Key + 'R' to bring up the 'Run' box.
7. Enter the following and click 'OK': ipconfig /flushdns

See if YouTube plays any better.

If the problem still occurs, right-click the video and go into 'Stats for nerds'. Check what it says for 'Stream host'. If it's different to any of the five above (before the '.googlevideo.com'), then open up the hosts file again as above and replace each 'sn-8vq54voxpx-q0cl' with what it shows for the stream host. For example, with my Digiweb connection, a video I opened up shows 'r2---sn-qpbpfxc-q0ce' for the stream host, so I would need to change 'sn-8vq54voxpx-q0cl' with 'sn-qpbpfxc-q0ce' on each of the five lines to prevent my PC using Digiweb's YouTube CDN.

The reason I use '0.0.0.0' instead of '127.0.0.1' is that the '0.0.0.0' instantly fails to connect, reducing the time YouTube spends initially trying to connect to the ISP's CDN before moving on to the Google CDN.

Unfortunately Google uses a variety of CDN IPs, so putting in a Google IP instead of 0.0.0.0 doesn't seem to work apart from the few videos that CDN IP carries.

To undo the change, just repeat the above steps and remove those 5 lines.

notahappycamper

Vico1612 wrote: »

Done
Feel free to chime in on http://www.boards.ie/ttfthread/2057578826

Did they resolve this for you?

Vico1612

I haven't had time to follow up with them . But I'm seeing improvements after multiple router reboots and getting new IP address ( I think I had a 78.x.x.x address when I had the issue whereas now i'm back with a 109.x.x.x address so don't know if it's linked )

notahappycamper

Vico1612 wrote: »

I haven't had time to follow up with them . But I'm seeing improvements after multiple router reboots and getting new IP address ( I think I had a 78.x.x.x address when I had the issue whereas now i'm back with a 109.x.x.x address so don't know if it's linked )

Interesting, as normally my IP is changed by them overnight but it hasn't changed in over 2 weeks. My IP also begins with 109. I wonder why a different IP address they would allocate you make a difference?

guil

I have 30mb VDSL and last night the stream was at 4mb over wifi. Router is bridged and God knows when it was last rebooted.

editorsean

The following is from a quick test at my workplace with an Eircom 30Mb VDSL connection. Going by the IP it connected to, it was a CDN within Eircom's network, so gives roughly an idea what the CDN should be capable of delivering with a 30Mbps VDSL link:



The dropped frames is mainly due to the PC being 8 years old and running various other software at the time. That was with Chrome as Firefox plays HTML5 video with very erratic flickering between frames on this PC.

As far as I can tell, if there's a dash before the last 4 digits for the stream host, it's playing off the ISP's CDN. For example, MichealKenny's second screenshot above doesn't have the '-' before the last four digits and I noticed this when I forced YouTube to play directly from Google's CDN.

Based on the stream host starting with an 'r6' in this example, I would suggest anyone that tries that hosts file workaround to add a few more lines to cover r6---, r7---, etc. up to at least r10---. With Digiweb, the highest I seen it go was r5, so it's quite likely the larger ISPs like Eircom operate a lot more CDN servers for YouTube.

editorsean

editorsean wrote: »

The following is from a quick test at my workplace with an Eircom 30Mb VDSL connection. Going by the IP it connected to, it was a CDN within Eircom's network, so gives roughly an idea what the CDN should be capable of delivering with a 30Mbps VDSL link:

The dropped frames is mainly due to the PC being 8 years old and running various other software at the time. That was with Chrome as Firefox plays HTML5 video with very erratic flickering between frames on this PC.

As far as I can tell, if there's a dash before the last 4 digits for the stream host, it's playing off the ISP's CDN. For example, MichealKenny's second screenshot above doesn't have the '-' before the last four digits and I noticed this when I forced YouTube to play directly from Google's CDN.

Based on the stream host starting with an 'r6' in this example, I would suggest anyone that tries that hosts file workaround to add a few more lines to cover r6---, r7---, etc. up to at least r10---. With Digiweb, the highest I seen it go was r5, so it's quite likely the larger ISPs like Eircom operate a lot more CDN servers for YouTube.

Off-topic but I'm having the exact same problem on my PC.

Micky 32

I'm a Vodafone fibre broadband customer with nearly 30mb. Youtube on HD for the most part un watchable .

TheDriver

Constantly sticking for me

Silver Serpent

Did anyone get sorted with this issue?