Fios YouTube Problem

[Alex2507]

We switched over to Fios and now pretty much whenever I want to watch YouTube or any other type of video like from Wimp.com it gets paused once or twice. It's been going on from day one and I just now got bored enough to ask for help with this. This never happened with regular cable hook up.

What can I tell you to help me fix this?

 

[lsiberian]

We switched over to Fios and now pretty much whenever I want to watch YouTube or any other type of video like from Wimp.com it gets paused once or twice. It's been going on from day one and I just now got bored enough to ask for help with this. This never happened with regular cable hook up.

What can I tell you to help me fix this?

Is it run through a phone line by chance?

 

[Alex2507]

Is it run through a phone line by chance?

No, it's still comes in through the cable connection and for the desktop I am hardwired to their router.

 

[TLS Guy]

No, it's still comes in through the cable connection and for the desktop I am hardwired to their router.

The problem is almost certainly outside your home.

You probably are not consistently getting the band width you are paying for.

Cable systems share bandwidth between users and often of a lot of people are one line these things happen. You may also have a bandwidth hog in your neighborhood.

Comcast at Eagan will have this problem on occasions at weekends. When I was in Grand Forks, MIDCO were notorious for this problem.

At the lake where I now have fiber to the house, I never have this problem. As far as I'm concerned every home and business should have fiber to their location.

The first thing to do is to check your speed.

Check it multiple times, especially when you are having interruptions to streaming.

Check your speed against what you are paying for.

If it is consistently slow, take one computer and connect it directly to the Net in case you have a bad router.

The above will likely tell you where your trouble is.

 

[sholling]

I'm on a 35/35Mb FiOS connection and I only see pauses from my laptop (802.11n) and only sometimes (way too often). My hard wired desktop just works and works. One video will play fine and the next just takes forever. The answer that I keep getting on other boards is that it's either a firefox problem or I'm hitting an overloaded youtube server. Have you checked your router to see of QOS is off? QOS will sometimes slow non-VOIP and non-gaming traffic.

Have you tried the FiOs forum on DSLReports.com?

 

[Adam]

Sometimes YouTube loads really slow for me, even though my bandwidth is still high. I thought it was a YouTube issue, myself. I hadn't thought about Firefox, but it makes sense that it might be.

 

[TLS Guy]

Sometimes YouTube loads really slow for me, even though my bandwidth is still high. I thought it was a YouTube issue, myself. I hadn't thought about Firefox, but it makes sense that it might be.

I have no trouble with YouTube and I am a Firefox user. I never have trouble at the lake, but occasionally at weekends at Eagan which is Comcast.

 

[jonnythan]

It's not your line, it's Youtube. Youtube has been really slow for me on and off for the past year, whether at home using my 15 Mbps cable, on campus using whatever they have (tests at 40+ Mbps on Speedtest.net) or the T3 at work.

 

[lsiberian]

No, it's still comes in through the cable connection and for the desktop I am hardwired to their router.

Sounds like FiOs doesn't have the bandwidth the Cable company does. Honestly Fiber only offers advantages at a distance not in normal runs. It's kind of like the difference between your digital rca jack and optical jack on a receiver.

I suspect FiOs sells a weaker service at a premium because of the Fiber marketing portion. At the very least you might call and ask about it. If you are paying more for the service I'd consider switching back, but then again maybe you like the TV service better.

 

[lsiberian]

It's not your line, it's Youtube. Youtube has been really slow for me on and off for the past year, whether at home using my 15 Mbps cable, on campus using whatever they have (tests at 40+ Mbps on Speedtest.net) or the T3 at work.

This is certainly a possiblity. And lets not pretend that TLS is in a lower bandwidth area than Alex.

 

[sholling]

I'm regularly able to hit 30Mb/s downloading from selected sites and sustain 10-15Mb/s as measured by DU Meter. Yet watching the youtube video below in 720P I'm measuring swings in actual data transfers of between 600Kb/s and 10Mb/s. It seems to need in excess of 5 or 6Mb/s to keep up with this video and stops repeatedly. Honestly I've suspected anti-youtube traffic shaping at Verizon for a long time but they solemnly swear that they do not do any traffic shaping what so ever and blame youtube. When I presented them with test data using a different protocol that alternate protocol suddenly (within a day) got dog sloooooooow for several weeks. I just reran my "alternate protocol" test and sustained 15Mb/s for the few seconds that it took to buffer the entire video. I then did the same thing on my laptop over my wireless connection with the same results. To me that that's obvious traffic shaping.

Test Video (try 720P)

Verizon forums and traffic shaping
DSLReports Thread

 

[sholling]

I'm on a 35/35Mb FiOS connection and I only see pauses from my laptop (802.11n) and only sometimes (way too often). My hard wired desktop just works and works. One video will play fine and the next just takes forever. The answer that I keep getting on other boards is that it's either a firefox problem or I'm hitting an overloaded youtube server. Have you checked your router to see of QOS is off? QOS will sometimes slow non-VOIP and non-gaming traffic.

Have you tried the FiOs forum on DSLReports.com?

I forgot that my desktop always uses the alternate method which is why it plays youtube so well. Without it youtube stutters. But I'm not going to make the mistake of posting my work around publicly again because I don't want them to start throttling that method again.

 

[Alex2507]

The only sure thing is that you all lost me way, way, way back.

Here's this part:

I need a little time to sort through this. I'm not sure what speeds I am paying for or what speeds I was getting with my prior high speed broad band cable connection.

TLS, Verizon just ran new FiOS service to our building and there is no hooking up to the internet without going through thier router from what I understand. I wasn't here when it was installed so I learned absolutely nothing.

Edit: Here's the second one I just ran:

 

[Adam]

Those speeds should be plenty fast to download YouTube videos. BTW, what resolutions are you trying to stream? Do you always go for 720 or 1080 when it's available?

 

[96cobra10101]

Here we used to have only 1 cable co(Time Warner, which was renamed Bright House) or DSL through Verizon. Verizon installed FIOS a couple years ago and IMO our service is much better. We always had issues with TW and we've had very few since we switched. Most people I've talked to share my opinion. In fact I just discussed this with a buddy of mine. He moved his business into his home. He had Verizon at his building but has Bright House in his home. He upgraded his service and his internet was down for over a week. The tech would come out, trouble shoot and get it running, not offering and explanation, and a day later it was down. Last I talked to him he was switching to Verizon. I think part of the issue is because the TW cable lines are pretty old VS the newer fiber from Verizon comes all the way into my home into a transceiver, then to the cable modem. These connections between cables have to be perfect. Copper coated steel and crappy connectors just don't cut it. I did have an issue with one of my tuners not playing on demand. I replaced the cable between the splitter and the tuner (RG56), and installed compression connectors (Cable Pro) and no issues since. I also have a Data Shark from Home Depot and it works as well as the Cable Pro.
A test you can try is putting you modem at the first POI of the FIOS and run a wifi test there. If the YouTube service runs better there, it may be your cable.

 

[sholling]

I just ran the Glasnost traffic shaping test and FIOS passed with flying colors (no traffic shaping found) so I have no idea why it chokes on flash video.

 

[Alex2507]

I just ran the Glasnost traffic shaping test and FIOS passed with flying colors (no traffic shaping found) so I have no idea why it chokes on flash video.

So it does choke on flash video. Like I said it gets about half and then stops, gets the rest and proceeds. Like Adam's HT video was a 2 part deal for me. Having that choice tune broken up like that ... it ain't right.

For cable I'm using RG-6 Quad with compression connectors. My problem comes down to FiOS.

 

[Alex2507]

Even better:

Even though you don't see it here, while the test is running it displays a green colored graph showing the download speed of ~20Mbps and all of the sudden there seems to be a break in the connection. The speedo starts slowing and a 'V' is created in the graph as it picks back up to speed.

It probably couldn't hurt to learn a little more about what happens upstream of the computer ... after I'm done with everything else. I'll probably call their tech people and shoot the breeze for an eon ... after I'm done with everything else.

 

[TLS Guy]

Even better:

Even though you don't see it here, while the test is running it displays a green colored graph showing the download speed of ~20Mbps and all of the sudden there seems to be a break in the connection. The speedo starts slowing and a 'V' is created in the graph as it picks back up to speed.

It probably couldn't hurt to learn a little more about what happens upstream of the computer ... after I'm done with everything else. I'll probably call their tech people and shoot the breeze for an eon ... after I'm done with everything else.

You have just discovered the dark side of cable distribution systems.

 

[Adam]

It's your computer. Get a new one.