Global Caches Everywhere? | A Systems Approach.

Google Global Cache (GGC).  GGC is a cluster of Google provided servers installed inside an operator’s network to improve performance by caching popular content locally.  Serving content from the edge of an operator’s network eases backbone congestion and relieves traffic on peering and transit links, saving cost and improving QoE.

Some of us live in the wrong cities and watch videos that have not been propagated to servers across the network. Youtube likely replicates popular streams across more servers – whether those servers are close to you “depends”. Anyone else in your neck of the woods watching that video? If yes, it might have been propagated to your area, but if not, it sucks to be you.

This explains why the top viewed, top rated videos all stream great, but the obscure videos I sometimes watch (like sample video output of obscure cameras) never get cached locally to me.

Or so the theory goes!

The good news is that tonight, our Youtube viewing experience is back to the way it used to be. After a month of very slow Youtube video delivery with frequent stops and buffering, we are back tonight to playing videos as they should always play, which is, without stopping!

Somethings I learned that may or may not be helpful – when playing a video that is having problems, right click (Windows) or Ctrl-click (Mac OS X) with the mouse on top of the video – a pop up menu will be displayed.

Click “Report Playback issue” to report problems to Google.

Click “Take Speed Test” – and then right click and choose “Show video info” (you can click this on any video too). At the upper right you will see some interesting data about the video and the video streaming.

The other night, I was watching this barely move along at 100 kbps to 200 kbps – and then mysteriously, very very late, it popped up to around 2 to 3 Mbps, which is more like what we ought to be seeing.

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why is youtube so slow in 2012? – Google Search.

Lots of people are asking this question but there does not seem to be a good answer. We have noticed that on our 12 Mbps connection play back stalls out all the time on HD (720p) videos now, making viewing unusable. Stalling even occurs on HQ (480p) at times. Does not matter what device we use to view – its the same everywhere. But we can play Vimeo or Netflix HD videos just fine.

One common culprit is thought to be the Adobe Flash Player, but that does not explain our Roku (with the secret Youtube channel that is no longer available). And the problem exists in different browsers on different computers. And lots of other people are experiencing similar problems, not just us. (See below – this has nothing to do with the Flash Player.)

Truthfully, Youtube is nearly unusable at this point.

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The problem occurs every evening from 6pm to midnight local time, for sure. In the early morning, Youtube works okay. This means that either Youtube itself has insufficient bandwidth or the local ISP (CenturyLink telephone company DSL) is doing something to limit access to Youtube. Again, Vimeo and Netflix work fine on HD videos – the problem is only with Youtube.