Virgin Media & YouTube - Throttling.

Bubo · 30 May 2013 at 10:21

Can you also block this cache at router level, i.e. a setting on your router setup page? I ask this because I get youtube hangs on my Nexus 10 as well, and as far as I know this blocking trick is not available.

james.miller · 30 May 2013 at 10:27

Mines been pretty terrible lately as well. Using the https site helps but it doesnt entirely fix it.

Phunky · 30 May 2013 at 10:33

Yeah, you just need to setup a firewall rule to block access to that domain.

wp-t31os · 30 May 2013 at 14:45

Can confirm also, youtube streaming is hit or miss some days fine and on others it's terrible.

If you can find what you're watching but on Vimeo you'll likely find the videos load just fine. Not ideal, a lot of youtube content isn't on there, but what is will load fine.

I'll test that domain block next time i have youtube hiccups... (didn't know anything about Virgin caching youtube)..

Razor-BladE · 30 May 2013 at 14:49

Arghh it annoys me so much! I'll try the https and ?1 trick, but I've changed the DNS to Google and still have the same problem.

Phunky · 30 May 2013 at 15:14

Razor-BladE said:
Arghh it annoys me so much! I'll try the https and ?1 trick, but I've changed the DNS to Google and still have the same problem.

Block the proxy cache request as mentioned in my previous post.

Razor-BladE · 30 May 2013 at 21:12

Phunky said:
Block the proxy cache request as mentioned in my previous post.

Watched a few vids, seems to have done the trick! MEGA thanks!

For blocking it at router, just copy paste the same line into domain blocking?

Phunky · 30 May 2013 at 21:43

Depends on your router, but yeah just get it to deny that URL

Razor-BladE · 31 May 2013 at 13:33

Ok, was fine yesterday, today it just seems to be a pain... a lot of the videos are giving me the 'An error occured, please try again later.' on both FF and Chrome, and it still sometimes only loads a small part of the video and stops.

Phunky · 31 May 2013 at 13:41

Do a traceroute to one of the cache URLs it should resolve to 127.0.0.1 if host file is still intact.

Razor-BladE · 31 May 2013 at 14:23

Which one is the cache url?

Edit: Previously, I looked up other VM threads as well and added some other IP addresses to block. Getting rid of these seems to have done the trick again.

Edit 2: Seems to be fine starting videos, and getting no errors. But still occasionally stops loading at random points.

visibleman · 31 May 2013 at 17:49

A thread was created over on the VM forums regarding blocking the YT caches, http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-120Mb-Speed/Tired-of-YouTube-buffering/td-p/1746698.

Yet to try it though.

FredFlint · 31 May 2013 at 18:17

I got the 30mb package about three weeks ago and overall it’s been good so I upgraded it to 60mb.
I did have a problem with PayPal, could not load the site for a couple of hours. I have also had a few issues with YouTube, Videos will just stop and the only way to continue is to refresh the page and skip to where it was.

KnightStalker · 31 May 2013 at 18:19

Ive tried all the fixes so far, but none of them are working, it either says there is an error or it loads 2mins of the video and stops completely, surely they should fix it at some point.

Razor-BladE · 31 May 2013 at 18:24

They're the ones I blocked (couldn't find settings to reject rather than block) and doing so was worse for me.

Stardog · 6 Jun 2013 at 09:56

Phunky said:
Simplest fix for those using the superhub is to add the following to your host file

It's in /Windows/System32/Drivers/etc/hosts and you'll need to run any editor with admin privileges on Windows 8 to save it.

Once done it will by-pass the youtube cache proxy that VM seem to have failed to implement correctly.

*EDIT* Make sure to clear your browser cache or some videos may not work.

This has worked for me for the last week or so. The video can still take a few seconds to load, but after that it's fine.

snitcher · 6 Jun 2013 at 10:06

possibly not throttling. it may be youtube servers that possibly get overloaded.

KIA · 6 Jun 2013 at 10:23

snitcher said:
possibly not throttling. it may be youtube servers that possibly get overloaded.

It's VM's YT cache/proxy.

Mr Blonde · 11 Jun 2013 at 00:22

visibleman said:
A thread was created over on the VM forums regarding blocking the YT caches, http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-120Mb-Speed/Tired-of-YouTube-buffering/td-p/1746698.

Yet to try it though.

Just to add to this, I actually blocked 62.252.170.140 -> 62.252.170.147 in Comodo firewall and set my DNS to 4.2.2.1, which for me is the only one faster than Virgin's own DNS servers, and am having no problems at all now with 1080p vids, finally.

* I actually came in here looking to put my £40 a month that I'm paying these dummies, into BT or Sky fibre after having to listen to some donkey in Bangalore offer up cretinous excuses all day regarding my sub-standard connection. They've just had their one and only stay of execution.

BuZ · 12 Jun 2013 at 21:07

Virgin is once again doing the same. When will this stop? o.O