Aol Youtube problem?

[CLK94]

Does anyone else face this problem?
Im on AOL 2MB Connection with a netgear dg834gt router and some youtube videos dont load while some do.

[fuzzybobble]

Happens to me too.
Utube and Google video are useless after 6pm.

Traffic shaping again.
Where certain programs and websites get the bandwith cut
so Aol can charge for a 8 megabit connection without
having to spend any money to upgrade their hardware.

I'm ditching them at the end of the month.
Already got my complaint in because I'm paying for
an 8Megabit connection and most of the time I'm
getting less than 2.

They claim "the contract you're on says up to 8megabit"
Imagine if you went to the supermarket to buy some
cakes and on the box it said "contains up to 8 cakes"
When you open it, you find only two in there.
Supermarkets cannot get away with it, so why should
internet providers?

[robin9342]

The reason ISPs quote "Up to 8Mb" is because unless you live next door to the telephone exchange, you will not get 8Mb due to technical restrictions such as line length and quality. In some cases, this means that you will not get better than 2Mb.

Go to BT's website and enter your phone number in their checker and you will get an idea of the maximum speed possible for your line.

Some ISPs are worse than others for traffic shaping. In my experience, Tiscali are by far the worst. You have to remember though, that it may not be your ISP at all. Youtube have finite bandwidth and will slow down during heavy use.

It may be corny, but the "information highway" is a good analogy. You will always get congestion and slow downs during rush hour. And just like the government don't want to spend money improving the roads, ISPs dont want to spend on extra bandwidth.

[fuzzybobble]

I used to get around 6.5 megabit until a few months ago. Even had BT put a new cable between the house and the pole across the street, as the engineer said there was a problem with when they sorted out the noisy line problem I had.
If I download a file off a website I can hit about 400k a seconds on average. But between 6pm and midnight the speed slows to a crawl and downloading a file off a webpage drops to around 30k a sec.
I've even watched it happen, and as soon as 6pm appears, down goes the speed. After midnight, up it goes again.

I use Emule for grabbing tv shows as there's no way I'm paying to have sky installed for 2 programmes I like. Emule & Bit torrent used to download a tv show in an hour or so, now neither of them ever go above 50k/sec in total and now takes a few days to get a tv show. Even Channel 4's O4D thing is painfully slow, and sometimes the DRM on the program expires before the download completes and I can't watch it.

I took my laptop to my mates recently and connected to his wireless network, no settings were changed to do it. He's on Virgin cable, and right away all applications were way faster.

[robin9342]

Definitely sounds like traffic shaping in that case

[Conniff]

Originally Posted by fuzzybobble

I used to get around 6.5 megabit until a few months ago. Even had BT put a new cable between the house and the pole across the street, as the engineer said there was a problem with when they sorted out the noisy line problem I had.
If I download a file off a website I can hit about 400k a seconds on average. But between 6pm and midnight the speed slows to a crawl and downloading a file off a webpage drops to around 30k a sec.
I've even watched it happen, and as soon as 6pm appears, down goes the speed. After midnight, up it goes again.

I use Emule for grabbing tv shows as there's no way I'm paying to have sky installed for 2 programmes I like. Emule & Bit torrent used to download a tv show in an hour or so, now neither of them ever go above 50k/sec in total and now takes a few days to get a tv show. Even Channel 4's O4D thing is painfully slow, and sometimes the DRM on the program expires before the download completes and I can't watch it.

I took my laptop to my mates recently and connected to his wireless network, no settings were changed to do it. He's on Virgin cable, and right away all applications were way faster.

Haven't used AOL since dial up many years ago and that was ok then.

Your probably right in the shaping bit, so why don't they put that in their T&Cs.

Name a site and the program you download fuzzybobble and I will try it on my 20meg connection and see how it compares. If you don't want to put it on here then pm it to me.

Same goes for anyone, if you want me to compare my download with yours then pm what you download.

[robin9342]

I will try it on my 20meg connection and see how it compares.

Show off lol

[Conniff]

Originally Posted by robin9342

Show off lol

I thought of that while I was typing but didn't know how else to say it.

[matt_smith2000]

The line rate is not the only thing that you need to take into account. You may get a line rate nearly up to the full 8 Mbps, but in actual fact only get 2 Mbps on the Internet. This is because of contention in the network behind the local exchange (this is called a DSLAM). So, if the line can handle nearly 8 Mbps, the 'up to 8 mbps' also accounts for speeds behind the exchange which can be pretty poor. The variation in speed behind the DSLAM is also dependent on time of day, so in the evening, there may be a lot of contention, whereas during the daytime, there may be very little.

Try a broadband speed checker, and do it a different times of the day.