News - YouTube video quality tests to name and shame slow ISPs

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See if your ISP is "YouTube HD Verified".

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Read more.

Seems like a good idea - and possibly more relevant than the various speed tests you get...

I'm sure a lot of problems are caused by Youtube and the player rather than the ISP. Like the buffering randomly stopping completely at times, skipping back, quality switching not always working, etc.

I expect this will still be useful though.

tbh, this is fairly ridiculous. Half the issues with internet connectivity have little/nothing to do with your home line speed, and everything to do with the many routing stages the information takes to reach you. In the UK, that means for most people going through openreach's infrastructure, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest limiter in my connection. There's really very little the ISP can do about that.

Good idea, but what it all comes down to is Youtube selling the rights to use it in ads later when it does become popular to check your IPS in this list. Or some kind of money making plan.
It has nothing to do with "doing good" for people that use youtube to watch movies

Seems like a stupid idea, most ISP's in my area can't reach anywhere close to speeds advertised unless is fibre.
Having BT say their 15mb line is YouTube HD Verified will not get me smooth playback when I only get 2-3mb at most.

Then again its not always down to the ISP even if you did get the stated speeds, such as where the video is being sourced from and youtubes own issues.

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

tbh, this is fairly ridiculous. Half the issues with internet connectivity have little/nothing to do with your home line speed, and everything to do with the many routing stages the information takes to reach you. In the UK, that means for most people going through openreach's infrastructure, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest limiter in my connection. There's really very little the ISP can do about that.

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Read it again - this is about verifying which ISPs are capable of reliably carrying streams over their entire network.

Seems like a pretty useful concept TBH; ISPs then couldn't just get away with 'ooh we offer xMbps' but you're hit by constant buffering on sites like Youtube because of saturated peering links etc.

In the UK at least, ISPs tend to peer directly with large content providers like Youtube (Google), so provided Google are keeping their network capacity up with demand (it's in their interest to do so, so they generally do), then there generally *is* something this ISP can do about it.

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Originally Posted by watercooled

Read it again - this is about verifying which ISPs are capable of reliably carrying streams over their entire network.

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Problem is, in the UK you're going to be getting your data go over multiple steps when it's being transferred from one companies networks to anothers and back again. Unlike in the US where most networks have total control over areas lager than the whole UK network.

So measuring whether an ISP can carry the data over their whole network reliably becomes instead, which of the ISP's the data crosses over Cannot carry the data reliably.

It's the responsibility of ISPs to ensure the networks they use as routes are reliable. If they want to avoid a poor Google score, then they should pick networks which aren't run by incompetents.

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Originally Posted by zaph0d

Problem is, in the UK you're going to be getting your data go over multiple steps when it's being transferred from one companies networks to anothers and back again. Unlike in the US where most networks have total control over areas lager than the whole UK network.

So measuring whether an ISP can carry the data over their whole network reliably becomes instead, which of the ISP's the data crosses over Cannot carry the data reliably.

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Not necessarily (although TBH I'm not entirely sure what you mean - multiple networks compete in the same areas in both countries but the size of the US means it's often impractical for all but the largest networks to lay fibre across the country); as I said in my post, UK ISPs tend to peer *directly* with large content providers like Google, Facebook, etc. In other words, there are no third party networks. Do a traceroute to a Youtube (or similar) CDN server, and you'll see it tends to go ISP, ISP, ISP...Google, Google, Google.

Openreach only control the access portion of BT; in LLU-enabled areas, ISPs (like Talktalk, Sky, Plusnet, etc) will generally take control of the data straight from the exchange in competitive areas, or buy transit from BT back to a larger exchange in the case of less competitive markets. The data will flow over the ISP's own network back to an exchange point, where it can be connected directly with peering partners, meaning transit from third party networks often isn't needed.

This is a great idea. Should stop the bastards from throttling youtube.

good idea

virgin
sky
bt
bethree

top slow capping ones around

from my experience it isn't always down to the isp... I know my isp isn't throttling my speed, I know it's not blocking anything as I can max out my line on any other site/download, including other well known streaming sites and my pc is more than capable of handling hd video... yet somehow youtube struggles to buffer hd video, it's fine with 480p but not 720/1080. I've got friends with the same issues and they're on a different isp.

The funny thing is that by installing a simple add on, magic actions for youtube (not spam, I actually use this as it's quite useful :)), for firefox/chrome it all of a sudden can manage to stream 720p without issue, it buffers faster than the 480p did. I'm assuming this uses multiple pipelines/connections or similar to improve the bandwidth.

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Originally Posted by LSG501

from my experience it isn't always down to the isp... I know my isp isn't throttling my speed, I know it's not blocking anything as I can max out my line on any other site/download, including other well known streaming sites and my pc is more than capable of handling hd video... yet somehow youtube struggles to buffer hd video, it's fine with 480p but not 720/1080. I've got friends with the same issues and they're on a different isp.

The funny thing is that by installing a simple add on, magic actions for youtube (not spam, I actually use this as it's quite useful :)), for firefox/chrome it all of a sudden can manage to stream 720p without issue, it buffers faster than the 480p did. I'm assuming this uses multiple pipelines/connections or similar to improve the bandwidth.

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That's possibly down to saturated peering links i.e. ISP's fault. Virgin Media had fairly serious problems along those lines a while back, and it took them a while to sort it. The add-on likely routes the data via another network, so it avoids said peering links.

results from your location are not yet available. shame.

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Originally Posted by watercooled

That's possibly down to saturated peering links i.e. ISP's fault. Virgin Media had fairly serious problems along those lines a while back, and it took them a while to sort it. The add-on likely routes the data via another network, so it avoids said peering links.

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Like I said I'm pretty sure it isn't down to the isp I'm on (I know one of the 'owners') and friends on different isps have have had the same issues (different exchanges/locations too).

If I was on virgin (it's not even anywhere near where I live) I would happily blame them due to them having their reputation shall we say, same as if it was talk talk lol.

I think this is quite a nice idea. ISPs here in my country can't even provide a steady 1-2mbps connection. I hope this should give them a little kick to at least try to provide better service to their customers.

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Originally Posted by LSG501

Like I said I'm pretty sure it isn't down to the isp I'm on (I know one of the 'owners') and friends on different isps have have had the same issues (different exchanges/locations too).

If I was on virgin (it's not even anywhere near where I live) I would happily blame them due to them having their reputation shall we say, same as if it was talk talk lol.

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It's not common for the bottleneck to lie with Youtube/Google's CDN. The ISP you're with may be using a third-party transit provider to connect to Youtube, especially if they're a smaller company (although even smaller ISPs tend to peer openly at exchange points). However, it's still the ISPs responsibility to ensure they're buying enough capacity to cope with demand. There really aren't that many companies to blame besides the ISP.

The fact you've said the problem is solved by using an add-on (possibly using some sort of proxy to bypass bottlenecks), suggests there is, as I said, some congestion problem between the ISP and Google. However it's not uncommon for ISPs to want to blame everyone but themselves...

hopefully this will force virgin to fix super slow youtube streaming between 19-22~

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

tbh, this is fairly ridiculous. Half the issues with internet connectivity have little/nothing to do with your home line speed, and everything to do with the many routing stages the information takes to reach you. In the UK, that means for most people going through openreach's infrastructure, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest limiter in my connection. There's really very little the ISP can do about that.

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In that case, every company in the UK would get the same score give or take which is still be fair even though it would mean having to find another "tie breaker". But if only one ISP consistently stands out as being better or worse, then already it would have some value. Of course, it would still only be indicative of the connection to YouTube, but it's still something. Those who really care about ISP overall performance should probably look at a more comprehensive benchmark suite. Well, I can't say I am too worried about YouTube streaming from where I am.. or the general performance of my ISP (brilliant).

Something like: http://www.measurementlab.net/tools/glasnost
is probably a bit more helpful, and also available now to the UK unlike the google tool.

Glasnost is a useful tool, but it can't tell you if your ISP is neglecting to maintain links to certain other networks. Of course, the Google/Youtube one only helps with their site too, but it's a start at least, and we may see similar tests from other content providers.