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Google Video Quality Report

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Re: Google Video Quality Report

#111
post #14
post #2

Telcos will have to invest in capacity where Google wants in order to get a good rating. Since Google is a de-facto monopoly, I think we'll see an Antitrust case soon.

If you look at the actual requirements they're talking about, they aren't that crazy. Even for HD video, they're talking > 2.5Mbps. So for really good quality, it's probably 5-6Mbps. I have 85Mbps FiOS at home, and I still sometimes have issues streaming Youtube videos. If my ISP can't even guarantee 10% of what I'm paying for over a fiber optic line, then yes, they need to be called out and publicly shamed.

For the record I hate Centurylink. But I have 12 Mbps DSL with them and have never had a problem with youtube.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#112
I also experience 'buffering' or pausing/hanging videos almost any time I try to watch a youtube video. The video ads of course work perfectly fine, so I don't think I'm buying this 'it's your ISP' argument. For what it's worth, I'm sitting on 100M up/down fibre...

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#114
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stevens' whole quote: "I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially... They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes.…

> I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. See, this is the funny part, not the "tubes". His staff sent him an internet? Yeah, I can see why that might take a while to deliver.

I'm pretty sure he meant "email" and misspoke. The overall point that the people regulating things often don't know as much about them as a specialist would, but it seems rude to laugh at a small mistake like that.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#115
post #3

Good. I swear youtube is throttled by Time Warner Cable for me. I stream Netflix, Hulu, etc and never have problems with them. I can confirm that I'm getting my speeds of 20MBit/s down, and yet almost every video on YouTube buffers. If I use youtube-dl to download the video, I can confirm that my actual connection speed is somewhere around 60KB/s. If I then use youtube-dl on my VPS with the same video, I get somewher…

They probably do it, but Google is at fault, too. Their new DASH thing has made the experience so much poorer. They never should've done it to begin with, and I don't think whatever savings in bandwidth they might have from it are worth the compromise. Youtube was perfect before, because it allowed you to cache videos, and go back on the videos whenever you wanted, with no need for reloading or whatever. DASH made it…

> because it allowed you to cache videos,

Youtube has to pay for that bandwidth usage even if you dont watch the cached video later.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#116

I also experience 'buffering' or pausing/hanging videos almost any time I try to watch a youtube video. The video ads of course work perfectly fine, so I don't think I'm buying this 'it's your ISP' argument. For what it's worth, I'm sitting on 100M up/down fibre...

That is because the ads are cached since a lot of people are going to watch that ad.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#117
post #3

Good. I swear youtube is throttled by Time Warner Cable for me. I stream Netflix, Hulu, etc and never have problems with them. I can confirm that I'm getting my speeds of 20MBit/s down, and yet almost every video on YouTube buffers. If I use youtube-dl to download the video, I can confirm that my actual connection speed is somewhere around 60KB/s. If I then use youtube-dl on my VPS with the same video, I get somewher…

Are you by any chance using non-TWC DNS servers? I had this same frustrating problem on Comcast, and it turned out that their CDN works by using DNS to direct you to local servers; by using the Google 8.8.8.8 etc I wasn't getting that. Even still, though, I run into certain Youtube videos that absolutely refuse to ever fully load -- it's always non-popular ones, and it's like they cache miss and just never get surfac…

> it turned out that their CDN works by using DNS to direct you to local servers

Are these servers' IPs static? Can they be hardcoded in your hosts file?

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#118
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably do it, but Google is at fault, too. Their new DASH thing has made the experience so much poorer. They never should've done it to begin with, and I don't think whatever savings in bandwidth they might have from it are worth the compromise. Youtube was perfect before, because it allowed you to cache videos, and go back on the videos whenever you wanted, with no need for reloading or whatever. DASH made it…

> because it allowed you to cache videos, Youtube has to pay for that bandwidth usage even if you dont watch the cached video later.

> go back in the video whenever you wanted without reloading

That's even more bandwidth that they have to pay for unnecessarily.

Re: Google Video Quality Report

#119
Now that it's fully legal for ISPs to throttle Netflix, Google, et al (thanks, Verizon) and extort money from them in return for giving customers the bandwidth they pay for, I think it's time for all the major players to track performance on the networks and call out the throttlers with a message right over the video stream on their website and in-app (Android, iOS, Xbox, etc). SO, when you use TWC and are getting only 60k as are all your neighbors, Google can pop a warning up on your screen that your connection is slow and the support number for your provider. This will result in lots of angry customers calling their providers about the issue, and get them to be angry at the right people.
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