What in god's name is Airtel doing with video streaming?

[vebk]

Look without getting into the technicalities of it - If other ISPs can provide a decent video streaming experience, while Airtel cannot, logically it stands that either Airtel is entirely to blame or at the very least, Airtel is not doing something it can do in order to improve the experience. Youtube working fine for me does indicate that there is something Youtube is doing right, that despite Airtel's sh**ty routing, videos play at (near) 4Mbps. So I concede that perhaps something can be done at the websites' end to improve the streaming speed. But do we really expect every video streaming service out there to have the kind of resources, expertise and budget like Youtube? In that sense are we saying that only the big players should thrive, and the internet should not be an equal playing field?

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@vebk .. I think they have unblocked the video sites.. isn't it?
And which video streaming site u think they r throttling? If they r throttling then shouldn't all the video sites be effected?
I am facing issue with Vimeo .. The site is working but the videos just don't play at all .. either HD or SD ..
I would have to confess some ignorance on this account. I don't know if the can have the technical feasibility to throttle some websites vs. others, but my (layperson) experience is that youtube videos stream at near 4 Mbps whereas videos on sites like vidxden, vidbux, gorillavideos, glumbouploads, putlocker etc. start in such a manner that within a second they 'rev' up to 30KB/s then stagnate there for a second or so, and then slowly drop down to 25, 20, 15, 10..... till

 

[mgcarley]

Look without getting into the technicalities of it - If other ISPs can provide a decent video streaming experience, while Airtel cannot, logically it stands that either Airtel is entirely to blame or at the very least, Airtel is not doing something it can do in order to improve the experience. Youtube working fine for me does indicate that there is something Youtube is doing right, that despite Airtel's sh**ty routing, videos play at (near) 4Mbps. So I concede that perhaps something can be done at the websites' end to improve the streaming speed. But do we really expect every video streaming service out there to have the kind of resources, expertise and budget like Youtube? In that sense are we saying that only the big players should thrive, and the internet should not be an equal playing field?

This Internet is NOT by any means an equal playing field. That is why some sites dominate and others don't. Few sites have the resources to use a CDN, let alone build their own as Youtube/Google have and as such will perform well in some regions of the world and not others simply due to their location & connectivity.

While there may be some blame placed with Airtel (let's face it, I experience issues with them as well because of crappy configurations which make *my* traffic work less efficiently) we have to remember that the Internet is a mesh, but despite this, not every network can talk directly to each other network. If the traffic has to go via via via to get from A to B, then obviously the performance is going to be seriously degraded.

I would have to confess some ignorance on this account. I don't know if the can have the technical feasibility to throttle some websites vs. others, but my (layperson) experience is that youtube videos stream at near 4 Mbps whereas videos on sites like vidxden, vidbux, gorillavideos, glumbouploads, putlocker etc. start in such a manner that within a second they 'rev' up to 30KB/s then stagnate there for a second or so, and then slowly drop down to 25, 20, 15, 10..... till

 

[vebk]

Interestingly for the past week or two, speeds have picked up on a couple of other sites with streaming happening at 150-200 KB/s. While it's still not 4 Mbps technically, it's sufficient and satisfactory in that all videos I have tried so far (20-30 in number) start streaming within a couple of seconds and continue without any stuttering for buffering. That's the experience I want! (fingers crossed! )