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FiOS + youtube essentially unusable

Youtube is basically unusable for me on FiOS and has been for a long time. Literally every single video buffers, even in 240p. Could this be an equipment issue?

The guy who installed FiOS installed VSDL, which basically routes fios through existing phone lines. Could this be the issue? Do I need to ask FiOS to come back out and install properly with ethernet?

I've changed my DNS to Google DNS but that's done nothing.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues with youtube + fios? This is the output from Youtube speed test (http://www.youtube.com/my_speed) for me (in black):

Comments

smith6612

The VDSL-based FiOS connection isn't the problem if you're getting the correct speeds and performance out of the connecton from other websites. If it's just YouTube, you're likely seeing a well known issue that has been beaten to death for quite a while as to why YouTube is slow. There have been some tips floating around on how to get the problem resolved, but ultimately it's up to Google to fix the problem. They need to allocate additional capacity to the Verizon network for their streaming platform. For now, make sure you're choosing the highest video quality possible, and reload the video a few times to catch a fresh cache server. Toggling the video quality should do that, too. The higher quality videos stream back at unthrottled rates (Can easily hit >12MB/s to them at work, which is a datacenter) and are often streamed from less used servers.

The YouTube streaming issues haven't been ongoing for just months. They've been problematic since Google assumed control of YouTube years ago and later on enabled High Quality and then High Definition video playback. Before then, YouTube had little issue.

Keep in mind, Verizon as a Tier1 provider supplies bandwidth to companies such as Google. If Google isn't buying enough bandwidth, they have to pay Verizon more for bandwidth. In addition, given the circumstances Verizon also does not have any on-network caching servers similar to what Tier2 and Tier3 ISPs tend to have in order to reduce their bandwidth costs. As such, all YouTube traffic is reliant on Google Datacenters, rather than some silly, easy-to-filter cache farm on an ISP's network reserved for only that ISP's customers.

Ultimately does this mean Verizon's to blame? Well, not really. They don't have any reason to make someone else's CDN perform better by beefing up their CDN via on-network caching servers. Net Neutrality, so to speak. They do have an obligation to supply customers with the bandwidth, and if you're receiving it to every other place, they've done their part. Ultimately you're at the mercy of whichever CDN or site you hit for speeds, and connection speeds are growing unfortunately at a faster rate than many sites, especially the smaller ones can handle.

DigitalChris

"Keep in mind, Verizon as a Tier1 provider supplies bandwidth to companies such as Google. If Google isn't buying enough bandwidth, they have to pay Verizon more for bandwidth."

Well isn't that a sweet deal for Verizon? Charge me on the one end as the subscriber, and extort money out of Google to get access to my supposedly fast internet speeds. All the while *cough cough* why not just watch Verizon On Demand?

Net neutrality? More like oligopoly thuggery.

The bottom line is this: if OTHER ISPs have good youtube performance, and Verizon FiOS has terrible youtube performance, I'm holding Verizon accountable. They take my money every month, and if they keep it up, someone else will be taking my money every month.

Hubrisnxs

@DigitalChris wrote:
"Keep in mind, Verizon as a Tier1 provider supplies bandwidth to companies such as Google. If Google isn't buying enough bandwidth, they have to pay Verizon more for bandwidth."
Well isn't that a sweet deal for Verizon? Charge me on the one end as the subscriber, and extort money out of Google to get access to my supposedly fast internet speeds. All the while *cough cough* why not just watch Verizon On Demand?
Net neutrality? More like oligopoly thuggery.
The bottom line is this: if OTHER ISPs have good youtube performance, and Verizon FiOS has terrible youtube performance, I'm holding Verizon accountable. They take my money every month, and if they keep it up, someone else will be taking my money every month.

Every ISP is having the same issue.

Why Is Everyone Having YouTube Streaming Issues?

smith6612

@DigitalChris wrote:
"Keep in mind, Verizon as a Tier1 provider supplies bandwidth to companies such as Google. If Google isn't buying enough bandwidth, they have to pay Verizon more for bandwidth."
Well isn't that a sweet deal for Verizon? Charge me on the one end as the subscriber, and extort money out of Google to get access to my supposedly fast internet speeds. All the while *cough cough* why not just watch Verizon On Demand?
Net neutrality? More like oligopoly thuggery.
The bottom line is this: if OTHER ISPs have good youtube performance, and Verizon FiOS has terrible youtube performance, I'm holding Verizon accountable. They take my money every month, and if they keep it up, someone else will be taking my money every month.

Keep in mind though, Verizon also has a shift of burden as a result. Being a Tier1 provider they're fully responsible for the Optical devices on both ends of their Fiber in most cases, they're responsible for all of the fiber they run and need in the big picture, and they are also responsible for buying equipment for their network. Keep in mind too, Verizon's network is absolutely huge. In fact, it's global. You can get Verizon Business in the UK, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, France, Brazil, in most major places of the US, you name it, for as long as a POP is nearby. They are also responsible for buying equipment that is key to running the Internet, such as routers that run for several million dollars a piece. While they do not pay for peering or transit, they have to pay for keeping their own network up and running, so Tier2 and Tier3 providers also can stay up and not fall back onto other peers.

Verizon's not the only company in this boat. AT&T is, Level3 is, Global Crossing is, TW Telecom is, and so on. Use your favorite search engine to find who who the Tier I providers are. Also, if any one of the Tier1 providers, such as Verizon for whatever reason do go down or encounter massive congestion network-wide, you better believe a good chunk of the Internet would be affected. A recent example of this is when CyberBunker was believed to sending out hundreds of gigabits of malicious traffic via spoofing to DDoS CloudFlare.

Tier2 providers are operating on a much smaller scale in many cases. They pay for their bandwidth, but can still peer for free, but they also have less of a burden for maintaining and running Fiber Optics for the backbone, their networks are not globally spanning in many cases, and they can be a bit more choosy with who they actually connect up to. As a result, you have to keep in mind that in order to cut costs, Tier2 and even as low as Tier3 providers will set up caches on network to cut bandwidth costs since it makes absolute sense to them. For Verizon, they have many other reasons to not bother with a cache, as then it WILL BE their fault if sites like YouTube are slow. That is also a network neutrality issue as Verizon would then be giving preference to a site rather than simply providing a pipe to somewhere.

If all ISPs at some point or another are seeing issues, yet all other sites work well I clearly suspect the problem is within Google's network or is due to common Disk IO from loaded cache servers. There's a nice tool out there on the Internet somewhere that actually benchmarkers and logs YouTube performance, and when you crunch the numbers through software such as Excel you can find some nifty patterns across ISPs.

I hate being blunt but the problem is not with Verizon. I'm sitting here watching YouTube in 1080p and it's working absolutely fine. if I jump to another video server (aka reload the page which does it most of the time), it could be back to slow. At work where we peer with Google directly as a Tier 2 network, we even see slow-downs and it is by no means with our network or POP to Google.

gloriana1

With FIOS, I have no difficulty using YouTube on my computer, but cannot find a way to access it on my television (a Vizio model compatible with widgets and connected to the network.) How does one access YouTube with FIOS?

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