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Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#51

Post by rlpb »

revelation wrote: post #12

This is just one of the many fights surrounding net neutrality. We desperately need to break up ISP monopolies and enact strict net neutrality regulation and bandwidth (even latency/routing) guarantees. The idea that a single ISP is in a position to charge both YouTube and its customers is bizarre. By any basic reasoning, an ISP that doesn't enable access to YouTube should be out of customers within a few months. Tha…

I don't see that net neutrality has much to do with it. I think that your other reason: monopolies: is the sole reason for these problems.

I have never had any of the problems described in the article. I live in the UK, and use a small ISP that prides itself on giving me a high quality service. And I get it.

Edit: downvoting? Really? If you disagree, then why not provide an actual explanation of why fixing the monopolies won't fix this problem on its own in a reply?

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#52

Post by belorn »

wyager wrote: post #32
zanny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public (ie, local or state government). Like the roads. Like the sewers. Like (some) power lines. Like the phone and coax lines (depending on time period, they have passed between private and public owners, but were always state subsidized in their deployment).

I'd rather deal with some shitty ISPs and some good ones than be forced to use a single shitty government ISP for the rest of my life.

While that might have been true of the past, we do have countries like Sweden, where the state is currently rolling out 1Gb/s connections. Even the country side is having fiber rolled out.

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#53

Post by belorn »

ams6110 wrote: post #19
revelation wrote: post #12

This is just one of the many fights surrounding net neutrality. We desperately need to break up ISP monopolies and enact strict net neutrality regulation and bandwidth (even latency/routing) guarantees. The idea that a single ISP is in a position to charge both YouTube and its customers is bizarre. By any basic reasoning, an ISP that doesn't enable access to YouTube should be out of customers within a few months. Tha…

Providing internet service requires a lot of physical infrastructure, e.g. cables run to every home, all the attendant routing and switching gear, a fleet of trucks and maintenance workers available 24/7, etc. Right now the ISPs (phone and/or cable company) provides this. Are you saying that the physical infrastructure should be separated from the ISP function? Who owns the physical infrastructure then?

Several different options are available:

We could have a FRAND like situation, where backbone network entities has to sign a Reasonable and non-discriminatory agreement regarding traffic flows. FRAND like systems has it own set of issues, but it has also clear benefits.

Government is the second obvious one. As with roads, government benefit greatly from improved infrastructure. All roads do not benefit from being toll-roads, especially when the traffic flow can radically change overnight. Who knows where the next youtube will be, or if google will move the servers suddenly after a SOPA directive is voted in.

Lastly, government could loosen their total control of the electromagnetic spectrum. Doing so would enabled a true global mesh network to be built, giving anyone with a receiver/transmitter the ability to participated. So long government claims to own the communication layer in the air, I will hold them responsible for the current communication issues in the cables.

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#54

Post by johnchristopher »

kibibu wrote: post #44
justinmk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "public" doesn't own anything. You can demonstrate that by trying to sell your share of the thing you supposedly own.

I'm not allowed to sell my own body parts, does this mean they're not mine?

Depending on your mindset, that could be the case.

What's your stance ? That's a very valid question regarding relationships between individuals, with the law and authorities in one group.

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#55

Post by GhotiFish »

Youtube has a very poor connection around my area in Canada. Video connections are unreliable, unexpectedly dropping or just being slow. Slower than the Kbps of the video I'm trying to watch.

For youtube's client side player this is completely intolerable. Which is why you don't depend on youtube's clientside player for anything. Use SMplayers downloader, or youtube-dl, or videodownloadhelper. These make use of more dependable protocols for downloading the video, and they will download 100% of the video.

You can buffer several videos up and watch effectively.

My user experience is so much better than what people experience through official channels. How can that be? I hacked my user experience together with bits of string and duct tape. Why should my experience be so miserable on official channels when so many manhours have supposedly went into making that experience the best?

Should you really be losing out to bits of string and duct tape?

What the ISP's are doing to youtube isn't fair, but the ISP's are clearly not the only ones at fault.

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#56

Post by mindcrime »

zanny wrote: post #21
ams6110 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing internet service requires a lot of physical infrastructure, e.g. cables run to every home, all the attendant routing and switching gear, a fleet of trucks and maintenance workers available 24/7, etc. Right now the ISPs (phone and/or cable company) provides this. Are you saying that the physical infrastructure should be separated from the ISP function? Who owns the physical infrastructure then?

The public (ie, local or state government). Like the roads. Like the sewers. Like (some) power lines. Like the phone and coax lines (depending on time period, they have passed between private and public owners, but were always state subsidized in their deployment).

Thanks, but no thanks. Have you seen the roads around here? They've been repaving / widening / narrowing / re-routing the main drag near my apartment for something like a year now and it still isn't done, and the design makes traffic far worse than it was before. No way do I want the same people who run the local highway department having anything (more than already) to do with my broadband access.

It's not a perfect analogy, but as the old saying goes... "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, in 5 years there would be a shortage of sand".

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#57

Post by toast0 »

revelation wrote: post #12

This is just one of the many fights surrounding net neutrality. We desperately need to break up ISP monopolies and enact strict net neutrality regulation and bandwidth (even latency/routing) guarantees. The idea that a single ISP is in a position to charge both YouTube and its customers is bizarre. By any basic reasoning, an ISP that doesn't enable access to YouTube should be out of customers within a few months. Tha…

From the article: "Instead, network operators can degrade traffic by failing to upgrade connections without severing them entirely. The public won't realize that's what's going on unless negotiations become so contentious that one party makes them public—or a government decides to investigate."

I don't think the US government (or those of its several states) is competent enough to regulate the complex interconnections between networks. I predict that the major ISPs will be able to find new tools to degrade network conditions faster than regulators will be able to sanction them for it, should the government choose to go after this fight at all: the essential abandonment of the wholesale provisions of the Telecommunication Act of 1996 ended the possibility of reasonable widespread competition for broadband: lack of choices is why this is a problem in the first place.

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#58

Post by Dewie »

I remember the glory days when YouTube would buffer the whole video from where you started, at a very uniform speed. If you wanted to jump to somewhere in the video and it was buffered, there was no rebuffering.

ISP's or not, it is infuriating for me as a user to see a website get significantly worse as it gets bigger and bigger.

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#59

Post by Dewie »

Spittie wrote: post #16
epa wrote: post #2

While it may be true that there are some outstanding ISP issues that lead to slow internet, I think the more pressing issue is the behaviour of the new(ish) youtube player acting erratic. For instance, you cannot fully load a video anymore, it will only load a portion as you continue watching. If you wish to rewind the video, for some reason youtube will want you to rebuffer the entire from where you have rewinded to…

ViewTube: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/87011 It replaces the YouTube player with the standard html5 video player. This alone made my experience on YouTube way better. My connection is slow, so many times I'll just open a YouTube video in a background tab, and leave it loading for a while. With this, I can just preload the whole video. And seeking doesn't make the video reload. A side bonus, also, is that every…

I've just installed this in Chrome and tried it on two videos and it is working great: the videos buffer quickly and seeking is fast and doesn't force a rebuffer. I've had problems with Firefox on YouTube, also trying the opt-in beta for the HTML5 player, but it didn't work. Cheers!

Re: Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make and break online video

#60

Post by kawsper »

chii wrote: post #24
zanny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thing is amazing, thanks for the script link! My slow 1.5mbps Internet has had awful youtube experience since the player change. I have been downloading most of the videos directly to avoid using it.

how do you download the video? is it a browser plugin? I use chrome, and the old youtube downloader extension no longer works after their UI revamp (and the extension is no longer updated as far as i know).

I have used Keepvid.com before, it is simple and works good. Sometimes it requires the use of an Applet (which seems very suspicious to me) so I deny it access.
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