Youtube just wont load at all

[Roooker]

Hi,
i am having some serious problems with youtube in recent time. I only have about 350 kb/s download but i have had that for years and i can get around with it. :mellow: I used to be able to watch any youtube video in 480p and i didn't catch the buffer bar, so i could watch all day long.
But recently youtube won't load AT ALL on most videos. No matter which quality i choose most videos just don't start playing at all. I installed a network traffic tool and that proofs that there is only 1 or 2 kb/s down, which i assume is the normal backgroud traffic. When i then do a speedtest it is 350kb/s down so my connection is not the problem.
I then try watching the video on my phone or my laptop and nothing happens there as well. I noticed that this is not a generall problem because some videos are fine. They load imediately and i can sometimes watch them on 720p without having to let the video buffer.

Does anybody have similar experience or maybe a guess why that bullcrap happens. Maybe i can solve the problem somehow (no idea how but i'll see). I hope that the is just a weird issue from youtube because some vids are fine and some not.

 

[Snortan]

I have a similar issue where during day I can watch any video on any quality but in evenings 480p+ needs to buffer and sometimes even 360p. I think it has something to do with youtube's servers, but not entirely sure.
The workaround I found is to block IPs of the slow servers. Most of these IPs are my ISPs cache servers, which during day work fine but in evenings are extremely slow.
I got Firebug for firefox to let me see from which IP is the video being downloaded.
So get firebug(developers console in chrome):

• open firebug on Net tab and then load a youtube video (you can use the Net -> Flash tab if the video you are playing is 240p, 360p or 480p any higher quality will not appear in the flash tab. Instead use All tab for 720/1080p)
• once the video starts playing/downloading you will see a lot of requests in firebug. On one of those requests the file size will slowly increase (that is your video that is playing at the moment), to the left of Size column is Domain column. Copy the domain of that file that kept increasing and ping it from command prompt, to get the ip address. (the domains you need usually look like something.c.youtube.com, for e.g: r8---sn-8pgbpohxqp5-aigl.c.youtube.com)
• Once you have the ip go into Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (you can also use the hosts file but it's easier this way).
• Create a new outboud rule -> custom -> all programs -> next -> add the ip you just found to Which remote IP addresses does this rule apply to ? ->block the connection -> next and give it a name. Later if you need to add more IPs, open the same rule and open Scope tab and add at Remote Ip addresses.
• Now refresh the video and if you pay attention to firebug you will see that your video is being downloaded from another server. Now this may be a slow server as well or it might be a fast one.
• So you have to do this trial an error to find the fast servers, sometimes there are none and sometimes when you block an ip the video will not play and will just say Error something, in this case it means you don't have a better server so just unblock the IP.

This worked for me and now most videos work all the time, but I can't promise it will work for you too.
Also sometimes if you switch video quality a couple of times it switches servers so that might be worth a try.
You can also right click a youtube video and Show video info and you can see the download speed of that video after HTTPVideoPlayer, HTTP,

Alternatively contact your ISP .

 

[Roooker]

Okay i have installed firebug and found out the ip from wheer the video is not loading (r4---sn-25g7sm76.c.youtube.com). The problem i now have is this:

After clicking Ok this happens:

Not quite sure what i am doing wrong..

 

[Snortan]

You open command prompt and type ping youtube.domain and then it says Pinging that.domain [ip.address] and you type in that Ip address.

 

[Roooker]

You open command prompt and type ping youtube.domain and then it says Pinging that.domain [ip.address] and you type in that Ip address.

yeah that is exactly what i have done i then added the 208.117.xxxx adressed and now windoes accept them.
The problem i now have is that the videos does not load at all

is the video i am talking about and firebug shows these two servers.
This one first: r4---sn-25g7sm76.c.youtube.com aka 208.117.236.137:80
and because i blocked the first one he tries another one: r4---par03x06.c.youtube.com aka 208.117.236.169:80

as the second one also does not work i blocked it as well

Now the flash window tell me an error accured pls try later.

 

[Snortan]

Yea, I've run into that too and found only two solutions:
1.sometimes if you change the video quality(say 360p to 480p) it starts working
2.other times there are no more servers to load from so unblock the IP
In my case I'm still not sure who to blame:my ISP or Youtube.
Try doing the same to other videos because not all videos use the same servers.

 

[Roooker]

I just played around with the video quality and found out the 240p and 1080p use a different server that works fine
I will keep an eye on that the add the servers that dont work to the block list. In case i get the error because both servers youtube tries to connect to are blocked i will just try to watch the video on all quality settings. Or just use a proxy to watch it (not 100% if that works fine). But i'll try it out and post my experiences in a while.

Thanks for your help btw

 

[Snortan]

Glad it works, at least partially.
One other thing to try is to use different DNS servers(openDNS, googleDNS), they may or may not work better. This might work if the problem lies mostly with your ISP. But it didn't work for me.

 

[grassman]

Change it from ISP server to Google Servers.

 

[FredEx]

I have used OpenDNS for years. When I got this new system I took my router out of the loop and forgot the OpenDNS servers are set-up in the router. I was having slow site loads and then thought about the router in the other room and put it back on-line. Page loads on the sites that were slow to start, sped way up.

I have a solid 55 Meg down and find YouTube to be a royal pain in the arse at times. It was doing it on several videos tonight. I'd stop the video and do something else as it loaded.

 

[Roooker]

Small update: I just got a new isp and a overall faster connection. Furtunately the issue is almost completely gone I have deleted the ip blocks in my firewall and almost every video loads fine regardless which quality settigs (no 1080p due to slow overall connection). Maybe my old isp just fucked up at the end ?

 

[Snortan]

Possibly.
With my ISP some users have this problem, some don't so I'm not quite sure who to blame : my ISP, google or both. But I'll still stay with them since they have the best speed around here.