Youtube and Google Music Issues

ChrisL,

For both Youtube and Google Music it appears there are certain requests that are failing when trying to play a video/song.  

Here's the video I'm trying to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAa7uorn5oI something my 2 year old watches every day for what ever reason.  Right now it plays the ad fine, but then video never loads.   If I go through a free proxy it works and loads fine (http://dc.proxfree.com/permalink.php?url=yx%2BhnYCyg4s24iThgBXg7eD%2BgixM%2BhdmOP7qE3TZgUOV3QLLYdv1HVEQe%2FA%2BWPfbda2VvW7klbrZvaQ6GM23Tw%3D%3D&bit=1).

Traceroute to youtube.com

Tracing route to youtube.com [173.194.46.39]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms DD-WRT [192.168.1.1]
2 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 10.15.224.1
3 8 ms 7 ms 6 ms ip98-173-132-145.cl.ri.cox.net [98.173.132.145]
4 8 ms 8 ms 40 ms ip98-173-132-220.cl.ri.cox.net [98.173.132.220]
5 22 ms 13 ms 15 ms chgobprj02-xe200.0.rd.ch.cox.net [68.1.1.95]
6 13 ms 14 ms 15 ms 74.125.48.241
7 32 ms 33 ms 33 ms 209.85.254.122
8 33 ms 33 ms 32 ms 209.85.243.53
9 33 ms 33 ms 33 ms ord08s10-in-f7.1e100.net [173.194.46.39]

Trace complete.

Here is the request that is failing when playing the video:

http://r8---sn-ab5e6nll.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?algorithm=throttle-factor&burst=40&clen=9272737&cp=U0hXRVlOUV9MTkNON19RSFVHOnRZdi0wTmZtMllJ&cpn=IBPoH9dpGAaoj8IV&dur=657.657&expire=1380933674&factor=1.25&fexp=924614%2C901482%2C916807%2C935015%2C916611%2C936100%2C924606%2C924616%2C916914%2C929117%2C929121%2C929906%2C929907%2C929922%2C929923%2C929127%2C929129%2C929131%2C929930%2C936403%2C925724%2C925726%2C936310%2C925720%2C925722%2C925718%2C936401%2C925714%2C929917%2C906945%2C929933%2C929935%2C929937%2C929939%2C939602%2C939604%2C937102%2C906842%2C913428%2C920605%2C912715%2C919811%2C939908%2C935704%2C932309%2C913563%2C919373%2C930803%2C908538%2C904839%2C931924%2C938608%2C940501%2C936308%2C939201%2C900816%2C912711%2C916304%2C900391%2C934507%2C907231%2C936312%2C906001%2C3300032%2C3300102%2C3300133%2C3300137%2C3300161%2C3310263%2C3310366%2C3310551&gir=yes&id=1006bbba8ae7e682&ip=174.69.71.246&ipbits=8&itag=160&key=yt1&lmt=1379397322813526&ms=au&mt=1380911383&mv=m&signature=7284B1ED93D73362E90D9B7954B75ABA1BD3417A.82057A798CEBF61A8CE4D20E4FB1C1681DA00901&source=youtube&sparams=algorithm%2Cburst%2Cclen%2Ccp%2Cdur%2Cfactor%2Cgir%2Cid%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Clmt%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire&sver=3&upn=w9RxgPmopwo&range=0-22860

Here is the trace route to that server

Tracing route to r8.sn-ab5e6nll.c.youtube.com [173.194.31.141]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms DD-WRT [192.168.1.1]
2 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms 10.15.224.1
3 8 ms 7 ms 6 ms ip98-173-132-147.cl.ri.cox.net [98.173.132.147]
4 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms ip98-173-132-222.cl.ri.cox.net [98.173.132.222]
5 15 ms 15 ms 14 ms chgobprj02-xe200.0.rd.ch.cox.net [68.1.1.95]
6 15 ms 15 ms 14 ms 74.125.48.241
7 33 ms 37 ms 32 ms 209.85.254.130
8 34 ms 33 ms 33 ms 72.14.237.110
9 36 ms 32 ms 32 ms 72.14.232.70
10 32 ms 32 ms 32 ms 209.85.249.10
11 32 ms 33 ms 35 ms 72.14.236.207
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 32 ms 32 ms 33 ms 209.85.251.53
14 32 ms 31 ms 32 ms 173.194.31.141

Trace complete.

Chris,

Thanks for looking into this. That was just one of the requests that was having issues.. I believe you tube will send out several to start things up quicker at a lower bit rate, so that throttle factor might just have to do with the particular request I grabbed.

Is there any other information you need?  I could give some more tracerts for the issues with Google Music but they look very similar. The site loads up fine but when it goes out to request the videoplayer from Google's CDNs, those requests are either extremely slow or just flat out fail.

I'm going to try and reboot my modem just to see if that has any impact since flipping over to Uverse works fine, so it isn't the computer, but something between my cable modem, cox, and google.

ChrisL,

Here is the server that is failing to respond for google music.  Looks like the same CDN that youtube is using.  I have a ticket open with google as well but since it works fine on Uverse they are basically saying its something with the Cox network. 

Any other thoughts?  I can switch to spotify for music, but it's going to be hard to tell my 2 year old his youtube videos just won't work with our new "fast" internet.  

Tracing route to r4.sn-ab5e6nse.c.doc-0-0-sj.sj.googleusercontent.com [74.125.0.169]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms DD-WRT [192.168.1.1]
2 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms 10.15.224.1
3 7 ms 7 ms 10 ms ip98-173-132-147.cl.ri.cox.net [98.173.132.147]
4 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms ip98-173-132-222.cl.ri.cox.net [98.173.132.222]
5 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms chgobprj02-xe200.0.rd.ch.cox.net [68.1.1.95]
6 14 ms 14 ms 16 ms 68.105.30.222
7 31 ms 34 ms 32 ms 209.85.254.122
8 32 ms 32 ms 36 ms 72.14.237.133
9 34 ms 32 ms 32 ms 72.14.232.70
10 32 ms 36 ms 38 ms 209.85.249.10
11 31 ms 32 ms 33 ms 72.14.236.207
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 34 ms 31 ms 31 ms 72.14.237.118
14 32 ms 34 ms 36 ms 74.125.0.169

74.125.0.169 doesn't seem to be a local ISP CDN. I show it non Cox network in CA. Are you sure you have the right domain/IP for the content you are having a problem with? My problems seem to be from the 174.x.x.x range, which seems to be the East coast local ISP cache servers. As in if I tracert to it, it only shows Cox IP's. Maybe your problem is different then the one being discussed else where on the forum?

I am going to try a IP block on the firewall on my router and see if that works. Anyone know if IPv6 DNS overrides IPv4 DNS? Hmmmm

I started having the same buffering problem with YouTube.  My son is quite upset because any video he tries to watch buffers constantly.

Out of curiosity what DNS servers are you using?  I was using OpenDNS but a different forum post suggested that when they tried the following that problems cleared up.  

68.2.16.30

68.2.16.25

I have tried Cox DNS, Google DNS, and Open DNS. Open DNS seemed to work the best, but nothing conclusive. It makes sense that changing DNS would have a effect though.

Something I noticed was the difference in speed when signed in Vs not signed in. I dumped my cache/cookies and tried some youtube not signed in and it seemed alot faster. I also noticed more of the videos were being shown in HTML5 when not signed in, so I wonder if that is relevant. However when I switched to HTML5 in Youtube's, it didn't seem to make a difference. Can't seem to get my head around this one. 

 Over the past week or two I noticed the exact same problem with youtube. The video will stop loading about 20 seconds into it. Then after it stops I have to play around with the play function to get it to start again. Sometimes it will and sometimes I just get an error. Often times the video won't start playing on it's own at all!  First I blamed my internet connection. However for the most part it's fine. Then I blamed my browser (internet explorer). So I downloaded a newer version. But I still have the same problem. It didn't seem as bad when I used Chrome instead of internet explorer. Then again that could just be my imagination. Something is definitely up though. We are all having the same problem with youtube videos at the same time.

Yeah it doesn't seem to be a DNS issue.  I am not seeing any problems resolving the host names.  If you feel so inclined you can try to use the Browser developer tools to see if you are seeing the same behavior I am. Chrome will be easier for this.  If you click F12 in chrome or IE you'll see the developer tools load up.    In IE you have to click the network tab and then click start capturing.  In chrome you can just click the network tab.  In your browser navigate to a video you have issues with.  You'll see a lot of requests fly by but you should see some that goto an address like http://r8---sn-ab5e6nll.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?.....    You should see a few that are (Pending) and never resolve.  In Chrome, they will turn red eventually when failing.

This will at least show that we are having the same type of issue.

I am having the same issues for about a week now.  Really frustrating. Anything Google, mostly Youtube but other services too are extremely slow to load if they even load at all.  Nothing changed on my end.  When you search the internet for "google cox problem" a ton of returns pop up.  Obviously something is going on at Cox regarding Google pages.  I'm not sure if they are purposely throttling or what the issue might be.  If someone here could give us a meaningful answer, that would be fantastic!

Michi, 

Unfortunately we haven't gotten any solid answers from Cox on if they have any solutions, or if they even acknowledge there is an issue.  Youtube and Google music are basically unusable on my connection, every other site is fine.  I have moved back to Pandora for the time being and I am using Hotspotshield VPN on the iPad for my son to be able to watch youtube.  I have a ticket open with Google and they are looking into the issue as well.  There is another longer thread about Youtube here and you can see a lot of people having very similar issues.  If you pay for any google services I would suggest opening a ticket with them, and continue to open tickets with Cox or email cox.help@cox.com, even though they won't acknowledge the issue or offer any means of support beyond rebooting your cable modem.

Here are some of the errors I pulled as per your instructions. Good source for data, thank you. Does this match your data? Even when not having the errors below I see all the paths that have large sizes (2MB) have high 500+ latency. Is that normal or a symptom of the problem? Feels like the larger downloads are lagging so much they timeout. Thats why F5 usually works. 

Thanks mrg for the info.  Amazing that COX won't do anything.  At least acknowledge that there is an issue, or tell us why they are throttling it.  My son likes to watch Youtube, it's part of why I pay for a fast internet connection.  Seems like COX should give us a discount on our monthly payments until they get this figured out...