Child Item

Site Totals

61432 Questions Answered 270 Categories

having Youtube probs with Fios? I have an official VZ answer...

Its been bugging me for a few months now with the constant lag I get with Youtube on all my devices and chatted with VZ today about it. They did aknowledge there is a problem, here is their answer:

"I've just checked the issue with my Network team, we are receiving such issues with you tube since quite some time, network team has ruled out an compatibility issue of You tube servers with Verizon routers, the new 3 rd generation router we are offering now works perfectly with you tube so we are working on to update the old routers to work with you tube properly, we will update the firmware on these routers to fix the issue. The new firmware for the router will be released shortly and it will be updated automatically, you will be notified by an email."

Here is hoping for that firmware!

Comments

smith6612

This doesn't make too much sense to me to be honest. YouTube traffic is nothing but HTTP streaming. If you've ever downloaded a video from YouTube it's nothing more than that. Unless they're using something such as SPDY that is throwing the router off, but it shouldn't be doing DPI on packets anyways?

gbfraz

I agree also, I dont see how accessing one website is any different from accessing another. But then again, I cant stand networking and Im sure internet networking is even more insane. Im sure they know something I dont but they did aknowledge that a lot of people have contacted them about this problem and feel they have a fix so hopefully they will have a fix soon.

smith6612

Same here. Two days ago I know most Google resources were running quite sluggishly for me, and YouTube was a mess that day. The standard tricks of reloading the page or toggling video quality between two options didn't help. It's been fine since. Much of the YouTube slow deal is on Google's end from what most have noticed since simply reloading the page can often fix speeds. Other times it's faster on more popular videos where lightly viewed videos take longer to load, due to the wa Google caches videos. It does depend a ton on the routing though, and the more customers with faster connections a provider has in a single region, the more likely it is for YouTube for see issues for one or more providers in that area if they hit the same datacenter or cache servers. Customer count is also a huge factor, too. The more customers, the more likely for issues.

Chances are much of the issue stems from the fact that most providers send their traffic to a single regional/nearby POP, most customers use a single set of regional DNS servers, and Google has a datacenter in or near the regional POP that handles traffic from that POP for lower latency. Now, you're dealing with a few things from here. If all of the providers going to that POP have very fast connections that overwhelm Google, then the problem starts to bite Google. If it's only one provider that has very fast connections and everyone else uses Cell Phone Internet, you'll find the provider with higher speeds will likely see problems. Also, each provider routes differently and also hits a different set of servers/cache farms, so if a provider has for example, high speed connections and they're hitting a specific set of cache farms only, then those servers get punished and it seems like a provider issue.

YouTube has a lot of work themselves as far as what they need to do in order to improve the speed of YouTube but it's a multi-faced problem. I can't describe it all in a forum post.

hitesh1

I just got FIOS but no luck...I still have issues and when i called verizon, they said that they don't have any ETA.

Hubrisnxs

If you're still having youtube problems, try this.

Here are instructions for doing it in the Actiontec Router, with Both bad IP address ranges

Log into your FIOS Router
Click Firewall Setting (at top)
Click Yes to proceed
Click Advanced Filtering (on left)
Click Add on the broadband connection rules you have setup (either coax or ethernet). You can check which one yours uses by going to My Network (up top) and clicking Network Connections (on left), look for the one that says connected.
Change Source address to User Defined in the drop down list
Enter a description (i.e. Youtube Throttling)
Click Add under items
Change Network Object Type toa IP Range
Enter 173.194.55.0 in the From IP Address
Enter 173.194.55.255 in the To IP Address
Click Apply
Click Add under items
Change Network Object Type to IP Range
Enter 206.111.0.0 in the From IP Address
Enter 206.111.0.255 in the To IP Address
Click Apply
Click Apply again
Click Reject under the Operation drop down list
Click Applya

hitesh1

Thanks so much, that has definitely improved the performance but I do still see it freezing...you sure we don't do: 206.111.255.255?

Hubrisnxs

From what I've gathered, these are the two "bad" servers, there may be more, when you watch a YouTube video, you should be able to check and see what video servers you are hitting, and you can add then using the above instructions.

I would test on a hardwired connection first to make sure that you don't just have a wireless problem on top of the bad servers

hitesh1

Thanks again. Do you do this to the Input Rule Sets or Output Rule Sets?

memelbert

No, there is a problem in Verizon's network. I have been running tracroutes for several days now and finally got a Verizon Tech supervisor, Jason, to admit there is a problem. Below are the results from "MTR" which is a continous traceroute.

HOST: new-host-11.home Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1.|-- wireless_broadband_router 0.0% 100 1.5 1.9 0.8 25.5 3.0
2.|-- l1100.pitbpa-vfttp-51.ver 0.0% 100 4.6 7.9 4.3 42.2 5.8
3.|-- g12-0-9-451.pitbpa-lcr-04 0.0% 100 7.6 8.6 4.8 30.4 3.1
4.|-- p5-0-0.pitbpa-lcr-03.veri 0.0% 100 13.4 27.7 11.6 208.7 39.5
5.|-- so-15-0-3-0.res-bb-rtr1.v 0.0% 100 13.7 18.1 11.7 102.4 14.6
6.|-- 0.xe-7-0-0.xl3.iad8.alter 0.0% 100 11.8 17.0 11.5 46.9 7.1
7.|-- tengige0-6-1-0.gw7.iad8.a 0.0% 100 17.2 18.3 14.2 48.5 6.0
| `|-- 152.63.37.82
| |-- 152.63.37.78
| |-- 152.63.32.190
| |-- 152.63.37.154
| |-- 152.63.37.150
8.|-- google-gw.customer.alter. 10.0% 100 83.3 86.6 80.2 125.4 8.3
9.|-- 216.239.46.250 0.0% 100 16.4 18.8 12.8 96.9 13.2
10.|-- 72.14.238.175 0.0% 100 14.5 16.1 14.0 33.2 2.8
11.|-- iad23s06-in-f4.1e100.net 0.0% 100 15.1 16.5 14.0 68.8 5.8

You can see at hop 8, google-gw.customer.alter.net, there is 10% packet loss. I always see packet loss at this hop in some form. Earlier tonight it was at 25% packet loss. google-gw.customer.alter.net is part of Verizon's backbone and IS part of their network.

Jason said not enough customers had called yet in the past week to justify a outage ticket to be opened. This is completely ludacris. As a sidenote, the Teir 1 tech support tried to upsell me service telling me that would help, not when you see packet loss like above. The only thing that will help that is to fix the problem, or route around it. <sigh>

hitesh1

Yup, putting the filter in didn't work for me, still have issues..

Hubrisnxs

@hitesh wrote:
Thanks again. Do you do this to the Input Rule Sets or Output Rule Sets?

Input rule.

Hubrisnxs

@memelbert wrote:
No, there is a problem in Verizon's network. I have been running tracroutes for several days now and finally got a Verizon Tech supervisor, Jason, to admit there is a problem. Below are the results from "MTR" which is a continous traceroute.
HOST: new-host-11.home Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1.|-- wireless_broadband_router 0.0% 100 1.5 1.9 0.8 25.5 3.0
2.|-- l1100.pitbpa-vfttp-51.ver 0.0% 100 4.6 7.9 4.3 42.2 5.8
3.|-- g12-0-9-451.pitbpa-lcr-04 0.0% 100 7.6 8.6 4.8 30.4 3.1
4.|-- p5-0-0.pitbpa-lcr-03.veri 0.0% 100 13.4 27.7 11.6 208.7 39.5
5.|-- so-15-0-3-0.res-bb-rtr1.v 0.0% 100 13.7 18.1 11.7 102.4 14.6
6.|-- 0.xe-7-0-0.xl3.iad8.alter 0.0% 100 11.8 17.0 11.5 46.9 7.1
7.|-- tengige0-6-1-0.gw7.iad8.a 0.0% 100 17.2 18.3 14.2 48.5 6.0
| `|-- 152.63.37.82
| |-- 152.63.37.78
| |-- 152.63.32.190
| |-- 152.63.37.154
| |-- 152.63.37.150
8.|-- google-gw.customer.alter. 10.0% 100 83.3 86.6 80.2 125.4 8.3
9.|-- 216.239.46.250 0.0% 100 16.4 18.8 12.8 96.9 13.2
10.|-- 72.14.238.175 0.0% 100 14.5 16.1 14.0 33.2 2.8
11.|-- iad23s06-in-f4.1e100.net 0.0% 100 15.1 16.5 14.0 68.8 5.8
You can see at hop 8, google-gw.customer.alter.net, there is 10% packet loss. I always see packet loss at this hop in some form. Earlier tonight it was at 25% packet loss. google-gw.customer.alter.net is part of Verizon's backbone and IS part of their network.
Jason said not enough customers had called yet in the past week to justify a outage ticket to be opened. This is completely ludacris. As a sidenote, the Teir 1 tech support tried to upsell me service telling me that would help, not when you see packet loss like above. The only thing that will help that is to fix the problem, or route around it. <sigh>

That supervisor is not knowledgeable if he said that.

google-gw.customer.alter.net

This is a Google Peering point, that they set up with Verizon and paid for. So they called verizon, said they need access to the network, this is how much bandwidth they will need, and verizon set it up according to googles requirement. IOW they are Verizon Customers too.

If google is getting hammered, or experiencing difficulty on their network, you will see it represented in higher ping times, and latency and jitter. They need to increase their bandwidth.

Google is acting just like you in this scenario. They are calling up verizon as a customer and saying sign me up for xyz. Verizon sets it up.

Now if you start downloading and pushing more traffic than your network can handle with the price plan you purchased, what do you do? you call and ask for more, or you make adjustments to your network to compensate. Same thing here.

Also, here is a permalink to a similar discussion that outlines what you are seeing in more detail. Also the filter rule described allows you to take a different route, that's why most users have had such great success with it.

memelbert

@Hubrisnxs wrote:
That supervisor is not knowledgeable if he said that.
google-gw.customer.alter.net
This is a Google Peering point, that they set up with Verizon and paid for. So they called verizon, said they need access to the network, this is how much bandwidth they will need, and verizon set it up according to googles requirement. IOW they are Verizon Customers too.
If google is getting hammered, or experiencing difficulty on their network, you will see it represented in higher ping times, and latency and jitter. They need to increase their bandwidth.
Google is acting just like you in this scenario. They are calling up verizon as a customer and saying sign me up for xyz. Verizon sets it up.
Now if you start downloading and pushing more traffic than your network can handle with the price plan you purchased, what do you do? you call and ask for more, or you make adjustments to your network to compensate. Same thing here.
Also, here is a permalink to a similar discussion that outlines what you are seeing in more detail. Also the filter rule described allows you to take a different route, that's why most users have had such great success with it.

This was the second night in a row that I called. The first night I spoke with Terry, a Teir-1 tech, and after he spoke with his network engineer said there was no problem with this Verizon owned router, but did say that this a Verizon owned peice of equipment. Last night when I called in, Tony, the Teir-1 tech told me that upgrading my service would solve this issue and that Verizon did not own alter.net. After much consternation I was finally able to put through to Jason, Tony's supervisor. Jason admitted that there is a problem with google-gw.customer.alter.net, and they have been seeing problems for some time now (at least a week), and Verizon techs have been "tinkering" with that system, although he did not have any more specifics since a outage ticket was not opened.

Do you work for Verizon? It would seem so based on your comment. Otherwise, can you tell us how you know the details of this specific peering point?

I wonder why Verizon techs would be "tinkering" with the router if all it requires is some extra bandwidth.......

Hubrisnxs

No, not needed, it's just clear that he isn't abreast of the situation. Also peering points are common knowledge for IT professionals, at the links provided you'll find a plethora of such individuals including Tier III VZ technical support and others.

It made the news at BBR and REDDIT

[133] Why Is Everyone Having YouTube Streaming Issues?

If you choose to ignore it, that's you're decision, but at the thread posted it clearly goes into the high level technical problem google and it's caching servers are having.

a quote from the news article reads:

Spend a few minutes in any of our forums and you'll find this is a universal problem with many carriers, including AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS and Time Warner Cable.

I've just done the homework is all.

gbfraz

Im a little behind since all the replies but I just tried the custom router settings posted earlier by Hibrusnxs. im still having the same probs when watching youtube. He mentions you can still have probs and when you do, get the ip of the video your watching and add it the same way. So how do you find out what those new numbers are?

hitesh1

Actually, it's not working great for me again either...even with the router settings

Vigz

Wow. I did this on my Rev. I router (red router with two antennas). It actually improved performance on Youtube. I put these rules on the Input section for both Ethernet/Coax Rules and Broadband Connection (Ethernet/Coax) Rules. Thank you very much!

Hubrisnxs

When you create your rule, did you use REJECT instead of DROP?

Drop waits for a timeout and then drops, REJECT flat out terminates it, and there is no lag with that one.

@gbfraz wrote:
Im a little behind since all the replies but I just tried the custom router settings posted earlier by Hibrusnxs. im still having the same probs when watching youtube. He mentions you can still have probs and when you do, get the ip of the video your watching and add it the same way. So how do you find out what those new numbers are?

gbfraz

It is set to Reject

Hubrisnxs

does your rule page look identical to this when it's done? (walkthrough with screenshots in link)

Here's how the settings should look like:

Network Object

Note the object type.

Note that the IP blocks are destination addresses.

gbfraz

Thanks but it looks like your images were rejected. Do you have a direct link to them?

Hubrisnxs

they are in the top part of that same reply. click and double check the configs.

Should be an outbound rule, etc they have the step by step there.

gbfraz

Then no they dont. You said to use the numbers

173.194.55.0 - 173.194.55.255
206.111.0.0 - 206.111.0.255

The screenshot on that page is showing

206.111.0.0 - 255.255.0.0
173.194.55.0 - 255.255.255.0

Is this a problem? Which do I use?

radiojack

How is it that I get 50/30 FiOS, only to find that I can't even stream a 360p YouTube video without it stalling? And how is it that I can connect the same computer to my Verizon Wireless 4G Mobile Hotspot and buffer an entire 1080p YouTube video in seconds, playing from start to finish without stalling? And why is that Verizon has 72 pages of listings (72 pages of LISTINGS FILLED WITH INDIVIDUAL POSTS, NOT 72 PAGES OF POSTS), for "Slow Youtube" complaints here on the forums, filled with useless and potentially harmful "tips" from users (e.g. blocking IP ranges, dissertations on how peering servers work, etc.) with no comments or assistance from anyone at Verizon? And why on earth am I paying for this garbage?

...BECAUSE I AM LOCKED INTO A TWO YEAR CONTRACT.

Obviously Verizon is happy to throttle YouTube speeds to the point that YouTube is completely useless. I'd like to be able to play videos in high definition, but forget that, it ain't happening. I'd be at least a little happy if I could stream at 360p, but even those won't load and play without stalling. Speedtest.net, etc. prove > 50/30 mbps connection speeds and everything else flies, but YOUTUBE BLOWS.

Thanks Verizon. I'm counting the days until the contract is up.

SteveSweetz

After having issues for months, around 2 weeks ago YouTube started streaming at mostly reasonable rates again without me doing anything (nowhere near my actual bandwidth capability, but at least enough to make 480p videos watchable in realtime). As of this week, it's worse than it's ever before. Takes 2 minutes to buffer 1 second of video - this is not an exaggeration.

What is going on Verzion?

I'm not going to go all internet hyperbole and say I'm dropping FIOS (which is otherwise great) because I can't watch funny cat videos, but there needs to be some sort of official response for this problem. If it's a problem on Google/YouTube's end then have your techs investigate and make a proper statement about it. Silence is the worst form of customer service.

Oh and regarding the original post, I have a 3rd gen router, as does a friend of mine who just signed up for FIOS and is experiencing the same problem. So the line that support rep was regurgitating is obviously off the mark.

Hubrisnxs

Interesting and seemingly related news...

• YouTube reaches 1 billion unique monthly users, almost 15% of planet Earth [thenextweb.com]

dapony

I have offically made arrangments to leave FIOS over this. It's ashame too because I feel like it is a otherwise soild product. I am sick of drinking the kool-aid about there internet with my 75/35 connection that cant load a youtube video. And I am sick of the flat out lack of care from everyone at verizons call centers. My neighbor was kind enough to let me have there wireless router password for the last week just to see what would happen with comcast when verizon is being very slow!! Well Even with a fair wireless connection I have no problems watching youtube in HD while big bad FIOS cant stop buffering a video at 360 res. No more kool-aid for me!! Just to let everyone know comcast is also giving me money to help towards leaving my contract and putting me on the newer Xfinity X1 platform witch looks promising.

vezrioncustm

.

dapony wrote:
I have officially made arrangements to leave FIOS over this

I had Fios installed 7 days ago, guessing with most current router. Totally dissatisfied due to the Youtube issue and want to terminate account. My old EarthLink DSL was fine but family wanted cable TV. Comcast has other issues , as do them all. Who is your preferred service provider? Am in Baltimore MD.

Arun_Gupta

I have just got FiOS installed about a week ago. After reading this post, I tested youtube and the videos do not work. What is the cancellation period without paying early termination fee? I think the person who took my order on phone said 30 days. Is this correct?

I have also noticed that my Android phone also downloads updates far too slowly since the day I switched to FiOS.

zotzer

I have had fios for years. Over the past week, YouTube has become UNWATCHABLE after 5:15 at night. I change to the lowest possible quality setting and it takes 20 minutes to get through a 5 minute video. No buffering, and freezing every few seconds. Please explain when this will be resolved, or I will be changing my internet service.

mrsmrs1

the solution posted by Hubrisnxs worked beautifully! Thank you!

namgod

Tried the IP range rejection as posted, but it had no effect on my youtube problem. Otherwise the Fios internet is blazing fast. Netflix and Onlive which are probably the most bandwidth intensive things I use work fine.

namgod

With the range of Ip addresses blocked, my Youtube connection appears to be YouTube GB, instead of plain youtube.

Cnd9000

I am in Richmond, VA and have been researching this issue for some time. It looks like this is a long running issue and Verizon is putting the blame on Google, but there's no evidence that anyone at Google is looking at this. Anyway, for what it's worth, I found a couple of solutions that worked for me: (1) Use proxy.sh ... which costs $5/month. (2) Use Comcast. It's nice to be able to watch YouTube videos again.

Namronorman

Running into a lot of videos simply just not loading anymore...

LogicalSpock

Same here. 50/25 wired service and Youtube is hit and miss. Some videos load right up, others won't load at all. I'll use Chromecast to cue up a string of videos and it will inveritably hang within the first 5 selected videos. Frustrating. The router setup fix posted above has not fixed anything that I can tell.

beetlejuice2

Things have gone from bad to worse for me.

I've had issues with youtube for long time now. Videos would take forever to play, but would eventually load and play. Now they won't even play at all. They just hang forever.

I've also never had issues with streaming Hulu Plus until 3 days ago. Now it stops and buffers a lot.

I've tried the recommended settings for youtube and that didn't fix things for me at all.

This is defiently a Verizon issue and once my contract is up I'm gone. I might even just pay the early term fee.

a1anwilliamson

I too am suffering this fate.

I have just noticed this in the last few days and it is extremely annoying.

Has Verizon acknowledged this as an official problem or not?

I am in the Richmond, VA

Madhatterpa

Same thing here in Pittsburgh, PA no problems before upgrading to Quantium!! Same issue the government and FCC was shut down on by telecom lobby.. The future is now! This is why an ISP should not also sell data services.. It is a conflict of interest and leads to unfair bandwidth management. In this case, I don't think they are throttling the video services, they just created a very high speed in-house fibre backbone but never subscribed the same allocations from the third party national Gigapops. So anything in house like speed test runs great but let it leave the KC POP and the bottleneck begins.. And now since the traffic shaping logic is more robust to better manage QOS and bandwidth, the routing queues are most likely overflowing and timing out causing the video stream performance issues, remember being a telecom they need to prioritize VOIP SIP traffic first! And now their Redbox traffic will move other 'video' traffic further down the QOS queue..

Bottom line the issue is an unbalanced portal to portal route on the Quantium backbone causing queuing latency and timeouts trying to mix newer routing logic and protocols to legacy backbone pipes that the third party interconnects might have, IF the issue is not that those intercinnecting pipes are not undersubscribed in capacity (oversubscribed in utilization). That said the only near term fix I see as a customer is to go back to the nonQuantium service which never had these kind of issues or consider going to a competitor who builds out a balanced backbone!

Child Item