Slow / long Youtube load/seek times

[csiwek]

I recently switched from Vodafone VDSL to BT Full Fibre 500.

I have been with Vodafone for many years and I was totally happy with the quality of the service. The only reason I switched was that Vodafone wasn't able to provide anything higher than VDSL in my area (they said they don't have free ports)

So, the installation went without any issues, I am getting speeds as advertised, strong 500Mbps, pings to major services dropped down to 2-3ms and everything works as it should.... except youtube.

It takes 5-10s to load any video. Seeking times have also significantly increased when compared to my Vodafone line which is still working. I did have Virgin 500 for a while and It was fine as well. The reason I didn't stay with Virgin was they did not provide IPv6 which I use for work and pings were much higher  +15ms when compared to BT.

I am a binge YT user and it drives me crazy when loading/seeking through a video.

Does anyone experience the same problem or it's me only?

[Carlusha]

@csiwek  Did you clear the cache in your browser when you changed over the BT from Vodaphone? You might also consider clearing our the browser data.

Are you by chance running Chrome? If so, try disabling hardware acceleration:

1. Open Google Chrome.
2. Click on the three vertical dots on the top-right of the screen.
3. Click on Settings,
4. On the left panel, expand Advanced.
5. Open System.
6. Here, you will see an option named Use hardware acceleration when available.
7. This setting will enable or disable hardware acceleration on chrome.

[csiwek]

This isn't a cache related issue. The issue appears to be the same on all devices: mobile phones, wired PCs, smart TVs, etc.

[Carlusha]

We too are Youtube binge users. It got to the point where I had to get another TV as my wife loves foreign movies. 

Now that you mention it, we have noticed a very slight drop in response times - that is from selecting a video until it actually starts. The best part of this delay seems to be the wait while YT decides which advertisement(s) to show.  Once we're passed that part, everything reverts to as expected. We are not paid subscribers.

It would also seem to me that YouTube has undergone an update release although I cannot be sure.  Where does one check?

[csiwek]

I cannot comment on ads - I'm a premium subscriber. As I mentioned the issue is not there when I switch to Vodafone wifi which I have still active

[ST7]

I just moved to BT and get the same issue, the spinning buffering icon before anything loads regardless of if the channel has adverts or not. Pretty sure I never had it with Sky

[csiwek]

Ok, I tracked it down.  The YT player is trying to fetch something from url: rr4---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com. 
For some reason, that address does not work through  BT broadband.  

Adding a false address to /etc/hosts makes YT loading very fast
something like this:
127.0.0.1 rr4---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com

[csiwek]

a little bit more tracking.

Seems like there is a huge packet loss to 
rr4---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com
rr2---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com

which are actually hosted on BT`s network. :
host rr4---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com
rr4---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com is an alias for rr4.sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com.
rr4.sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com has address 213.123.245.175
rr4.sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com has IPv6 address 2a00:23a0:1e5:5::f

host 213.123.245.175
175.245.123.213.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer host213-123-245-175.in-addr.btopenworld.com.

ping rr4---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com -s 1400
--- rr4.sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com ping statistics ---
38 packets transmitted, 16 received, 57.8947% packet loss, time 37503ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.986/3.881/4.610/0.481 ms

is anyone able to escalate this with BT engineers or know where it can be escalated?

[Kanashiidesu]

Recently moved to BT and noticed the same issue, YouTube is super omega slowed + delayed on every single device.

have you found the solution on how to fix the problem?

[csiwek]

the solution I came up with is to block these hostnames:

rr4---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com
rr2---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com
rr1---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com
rr3---sn-cu-ajted.googlevideo.com

but it isn't a proper solution  - it's a sticky plaster that may stop working at any time. 

Surely, someone from BT engineering should look into this.