I'm posting to see if anyone else is experiencing this and hopefully get it escalated to the relevant network team.
I have BT Full Fibre and consistently achieve around 900 Mbps download speeds with no issues on general internet usage. Speed tests, large downloads, cloud services, gaming, and other streaming platforms all perform as expected.
However, YouTube has become increasingly problematic. Videos often take a long time to start, buffer unexpectedly, or struggle to maintain higher resolutions despite the connection having more than enough available bandwidth.
A few observations from my testing:
- The issue appears to be isolated to YouTube/Google video delivery.
- Multiple devices on my network experience the same behaviour.
- The issue occurs regardless of browser, operating system, or device.
- General network performance remains normal.
- There is no packet loss or local connectivity issue evident on my connection.
- Other BT customers appear to be reporting similar symptoms on various forums.
The most interesting finding is that when I connect through a VPN, the problem disappears immediately. YouTube videos load instantly, seek without delay, and stream at high resolutions without buffering.
This would suggest the issue is unlikely to be related to my local network, Wi-Fi, router, device, or available bandwidth. Instead, it points towards a potential issue somewhere within BT's routing path to Google's infrastructure.
Possible areas worth investigating could include:
- Routing inefficiencies between BT and Google ASN paths.
- Peering congestion during peak periods.
- Issues with BT's connection to Google Global Cache (GGC) servers.
- CDN path selection problems.
- Traffic engineering or load-balancing issues affecting YouTube traffic.
- Increased latency or packet loss on specific transit routes.
The fact that a VPN completely bypasses the problem suggests that changing the route to Google's network resolves the issue, which makes me suspect this is a network-level issue rather than a customer-side fault.
Could a BT representative please forward this to the relevant network engineering team for investigation? I'd also be interested to know whether BT is aware of any ongoing issues affecting YouTube performance across the network.
Thanks.
