Bypass ISP YouTube throttling

After reading through this post on Reddit, which describes how the author worked around intentional bandwidth trottling, we decided to give it a try here and it has had a huge effect.

We recently upped our speed on FiOS to 75mps, but we were bummed out when YouTube continued to buffer like mad even on non-HD content. After blocking the appropriate caches, HD videos now fully load in record time, often before the opening credits on the video are over. I haven't seen a single buffering notification and videos play instantly. The difference is akin to what I felt when I loaded my first webpage after switching from my 56K modem to cable.

Anyway, it might be of use to some of you. All props go to Kestrel for finding and then implementing the fix.

I didn't hear before that FiOS employs throttling.

Ah, I've seen suggestions for this type of stuff before. I'll have to try this out on my router when I get home tonight.

I did a similar fix myself a couple weeks ago. Definitely a huge difference at least on YouTube.

Is this ISP dependent? I tried this, and for me it made no difference whatsoever.

I didn't do it at the router level, just in the windows firewall. Can someone post (here) straightforward directions? I'm not on TWC or Comcast though, if that matters (my cable co is BrightHouse)

I'm on Insight cable. I don't have a link handy for the version of the fix I used, but I did it in windows too because my current router doesn't even have the option.

I was wondering why Youtube was running so terribly lately. Thanks!

I have issues with YouTube on AT&T sometimes. I may give this a go.

Wow. I'm on Time Warner and have been wondering this exact thing - why is my 50MB downstream so nice, and yet YouTube seems like it can barely play?

I'm adding that iptables line to my DD-WRT router. Which is great since many of the devices we watch YouTube content on are not PCs.

This was the fix that worked for me.

Thin_J wrote:

This was the fix that worked for me.

I did basically the same thing through the advanced firewall GUI. Just testing, but seems to improve things on Comcast. It went ahead and loaded a full 45 minute Tested.com vid.

Thin_J wrote:

This was the fix that worked for me.

I sooo hope this works.

/crosses evil fingers

So, all you need to do is block 173.194.55.0 at port 24 and 206.111.0.0 at port 16? I may go and do that with my router even though I haven't noticed YouTube being terrible. I don't really use YouTube all that much, though. I'll try testing it later today. I'm using Comcast.

So, all you need to do is block 173.194.55.0 at port 24 and 206.111.0.0 at port 16?

Note that the /24 and /16 are not ports, but netmasks. 173.194.55.0/24 is a Class C address: that means any host from 173.194.55.0 to 173.194.55.255 will be blocked, or 255 hosts. A /16 is much larger: 206.111.0.0/16 covers everything from 206.111.0.0 to 206.111.255.255, or 65,535 hosts. That's an awful lot of IP addresses to just turn off. If anything is ever put into either net range that you actually want, you will be unable to reach the servers in question. They will stay blocked until you remember either to disable these rules, or to narrow their scope.

It would be better/safer if we could get a more precise description of what needs blocking. Blocking 65,000 hosts because you don't want to be able to reach a few IPs in that range is using a chainsaw instead of a scalpel.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that notation. Interesting.

I put these rules into iptables on my router last night. There wasn't an immediately notable effect, especially with the way the flash player won't buffer very far ahead. YouTube usually works just fine for me anyway, it's just the occasional video that won't load at all that drives me bonkers. Supposedly it has great effect on twitch streams as well, so I'll have to see if I get better performance on a few 1080+ streams.

Interesting, gonna try updating things in Tomato when I get home tonight.

*Legion*, we're on the same ISP... have you seen a noticeable improvement?

Just an FYI, I run a Plex server as my computer is hooked up to the TV. Once I added whatever command seemed to work, my server was no longer found on my TV. I had to remove it. Not even sure if it made any difference overall but if you run into additional problems it could be related. Oh well

DeThroned wrote:

Just an FYI, I run a Plex server as my computer is hooked up to the TV. Once I added whatever command seemed to work, my server was no longer found on my TV. I had to remove it. Not even sure if it made any difference overall but if you run into additional problems it could be related. Oh well :)

Are you pointing to the IP address or letting your TV auto-connect to Plex? I have a Plex server behind a switch (don't know why this would matter) and the auto-connect does not work. I have to access it explicitly by ip address. Strangely, once I connect via ip address, auto-connect magically works - which I then promptly disabled.

Finally got around to setting this up. Huge improvement confirmed.

How long before they change the IPs, I wonder. Nice find, Mateo!

Hmm, my router (Apple AirPort Extreme) is probably too "user friendly" for me to configure these type if rules...

PaladinTom wrote:
DeThroned wrote:

Just an FYI, I run a Plex server as my computer is hooked up to the TV. Once I added whatever command seemed to work, my server was no longer found on my TV. I had to remove it. Not even sure if it made any difference overall but if you run into additional problems it could be related. Oh well :)

Are you pointing to the IP address or letting your TV auto-connect to Plex? I have a Plex server behind a switch (don't know why this would matter) and the auto-connect does not work. I have to access it explicitly by ip address. Strangely, once I connect via ip address, auto-connect magically works - which I then promptly disabled.

Tried both. Normally the auto-connect works but didn't. Typing in my IP address manually failed as well.

Hmm could not get this to work using the cmd line in win 7. I'll have to wait for some more posts hehe

karmajay wrote:

Hmm could not get this to work using the cmd line in win 7. I'll have to wait for some more posts hehe

Go into Advanced Firewall GUI and do it there.

Thank god for this. Seriously. Ever since moving to Maryland again I've had issues with YT.

karmajay wrote:

Hmm could not get this to work using the cmd line in win 7. I'll have to wait for some more posts hehe

Boo got the command to work but it did not help my YT crappy viewing.

garion333 wrote:

Thank god for this. Seriously. Ever since moving to Maryland again I've had issues with YT.

I think everyone has had issues but my question is this from the ISP or YouTube end?

I can understand wanting to curb needless bandwidth waste but blah.

MyBrainHz wrote:

Interesting, gonna try updating things in Tomato when I get home tonight.

*Legion*, we're on the same ISP... have you seen a noticeable improvement?

I have improvement from the web, but performance still seems poor on devices (Apple TV, Xbox).

Are the instructions the same for Comcast?

iptables -I FORWARD -s 192.168.0.0/24 -d 206.111.0.0/16 -j REJECT

Edwin wrote:

Are the instructions the same for Comcast?

iptables -I FORWARD -s 192.168.0.0/24 -d 206.111.0.0/16 -j REJECT

I would guess that it is, since it worked well for us (Verizon) and the original poster was on Time Warner.

From my understanding, the throttling is a feature that YouTube provides as a service in case someone wants to throttle YouTube on their network. Businesses might use it to make sure employees don't consume all of their bandwidth on cat videos. At its core, the requests for videos are directed toward these low bandwidth caches. If your ISP is using this feature, as was obviously the case for many, then these commands disable it by refusing to talk to those machines. I believe the addresses are controlled by YouTube, not a particular provider.