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Comment by tensafefrogs | Hacker News Reader

Hi, ex-youtube video eng here. (also posted this as a comment on the blog post)

A while ago YouTube put together a speed information page that you could use to check out your download speeds as well as compare to other isps in your area:

http://www.youtube.com/my_speed

I'm also on Time Warner, and my graph shows wild inconsistencies - sometimes it spikes up to much faster than others, sometimes it's way below the average speed, and it also shows that Time Warner is the slowest provider out of all of the NYC area ISPs.

I wish it was easier to switch to another provider out here.

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Thanks for the my_speed link. When I run the test video contained at 720p, I consistently get outstanding video with no streaming pauses.

However, if I switch to another video (say a Google IO 2012 presentation), I get long pauses within the video constantly. 5-10 seconds of video, with 3-5 second pauses. In short, the test is hardly representative of my normal YouTube results.

That my_speed page says:

"The test video will show you your streaming information in real time (look next to "Streaming HTTP")."

Uh, where? I don't see that anywhere, and Ctrl-F "streaming" doesn't find it, either.

I think they broke it - right click the video & hit "show video info" and you'll see the debug information in the box in the top left. It now starts with "TagStreamPlayer."

Select "Show video info" after right clicking on any Youtube video.

I'm on FiOS, and my graph also shows wild inconsistencies, sometimes spiking up much faster than others, sometimes way below every other line in the graph for multiple days. I'm leaning towards this not being an ISP problem at all until there's more evidence.

I'm on fios and am seeing similar results. Starts high and then falls off a cliff far below all other lines then comes up and down.

I'm also on Fios and have 75 down package I just got it. It was so bad I couldn't even watch youtube videos 720 or 1080. Pausing them did nothing. I installed a script called YousableTubeFix for Chrome and now I download at 60-70. I don't know what the problem was but having 75 down and not being able to watch a video was the most frustrating thing in the world. Finally did some research and someone with fios recommended this.

I'm also on time warner NYC. The funny thing is my 30 mbps wideband is consistently ~30 mbps from almost everywhere. Torrents and downloads consistently max out my bandwidth (even during peak hours) and most sites load just as quickly as my work's speedy connection. Youtube is the only site I have issues with.

Interestingly enough, the video embedded in that page doesn't load at all when I have the two subnets listed in the article blocked. Everything else on YT loads fine, and that particular video loads fine if the subnets are unblocked. I'm guessing this is a unique experience based on the other comments.

And here's a bunch of FAQ + answers about that my_speed page: http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

Mine always says Belgium, though I am in the United States. United States isn't an option choice for country. Any idea why?

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