YouTube Buffering and Slow Loading on BT Full Fibre 900 – Possible Routing/Peering Issue

[Kimberlin]

@tyencyu  Honestly, bin that ISP router and buy something decent. Tad dismissive I agree, but even my neighbour who's on EE and is suffering problems on his network which is also FTTP,  is now buying his own router because he's sick to the back teeth of whatever it is they've given him as it keeps dropping all the time. It isn't EE's latest router by the way, some awful looking slab that feels like a certain toy brand made famous in the 1970's.

[tyencyu]

@Kimberlin Potentially something to look at eventually, not something I'm likely to do as a response to these shenanigans, I'm happy going through the VPN and seeing what transpires as a result.

On that front there's an equivalent thread over on the EE forums by the looks, and now raised via plusnet, so I reckon for anyone coming after unless it's to raise it from a new perspective it's probably a waiting angle now. 

[tyencyu]

Interestingly (going back to the last time something similar happened)

Working along a similar path, I seem to have the most issue with rr5---sn-cu-cime7.googlevideo.com turning on the VPN bounces me over to rr3---sn-cu-cime7.googlevideo.com or https://rr1---sn-aigzrnze.googlevideo.com and the issue entirely stops. These look to be different GGC servers than the last time the issue was raised, not sure if that's relevant or not. 

Shall just keep using the VPN for now 🤷

[orozz]

It’s really bad again tonight, especially with newly released videos. 

BT FF900 928/110 5ms using a Netgear router.

[tyencyu]

@orozz 
Can you do some science for me? If you've got access to a desktop, Get into your browser's dev tools (Usually F12), Click the network tab and see which GGC server yours hits. Mine seems to consistently hit rr5---sn-cu-cime7, I'm curious to see which yours (or anyone else's) hits

It's part of the URL, I won't post the full URL because when I tried to pass this info along earlier the post got auto reported for spam...

[CarlH]

I did try posting but the offending CDN is:

inet6num:       2a00:23a0::/32

netname:        BT-Retail

descr:          British Telecom BT Retail Management container

[tyencyu]

@CarlH Nice one!

Likely the same one then, I believe they all nslookup back to that IPv6

Someone on the Reddit thread has mentioned that it does look like a GGC server stall. They did some packet analysis that's highlighted a incorrect initial congestion parameter that's hard capping stream bandwidth. (I'm paraphrasing what they've said and can by no means take credit)

This is something BT needs to solve, And looks to be extremely similar to the issue raised on these forums in 2023

@Steve_M Apologies for the direct @ but I've seen earlier that you'd reported to the relevant teams, I appreciate that this is something that's come out of somewhere on the internet but if you could potentially pass on the above as a line of enquiry we'd all appreciate it. There's forum posts across BT, PN and EE all reporting essentially the same issue

[Azileo]

Has anyone received a response from BT or any of their representatives regarding this issue? I'm finding it increasingly frustrating that none of the forum moderators have acknowledged or responded to the numerous posts raised so far.

What's equally concerning is that telephone support appears unable to address anything beyond basic first-line troubleshooting. The conversations seem limited to scripted steps such as restarting the router, with little understanding of the underlying technical problem being reported.

[CarlH]

BT or EE or Router make little difference although I would recommend something more serious.

YouTube and their rather crappy "Auto" does not really help either.

[Kimberlin]

@Azileo  The Moderators appear to split their time between both the BT and EE forums working both at the same time. I suspect they are being kept busy with other issues.