I'm not sure if this is the right section for this, but about an hour ago my YouTube stopped loading entirely with most, if not all videos either refusing to play at all or playing 4 seconds every minute.
I then go and find all the other websites I use are working fine... So could my ISP (Virgin Media) be throttling my connection to youtube?
I would try a VPN but that's a closed door for me. (I'm stingy)
Thoughts appreciated!
~pipnina
It could be your flash is out of date.
Its hard to say that early on tbh.
There could be a network problem with your ISP that hasn't been resolved via dynamic routing protocols. (aka Hardware failure) If this is still continuing within an day or two, then it could be throttling.
Yeah, don't immediately jump to "I'm Being Throttled!" when a website has poor performance. It's far more likely that it's either congestion, server issues or a problem somewhere along the path your ISP sends you to access that website. It could also be a flash issue, because, well, flash sucks ass. So, while it's possible that you are being throttled, it's more likely just a technical issue that will be resolved at some point. If the problem persists, then maybe you have a case for throttling.
Try to use HTML5 and see if that will help with the issue for a while.
I just signed up to say that I also have the same problem. I'm also with Virgin Media, on the 152 Mbps tier.
When I click on a video, occasionally it plays, but most of the time I just get the spinning "loading" icon and it never starts. Sometimes a video will play for a few seconds, but then it'll stop and I get the buffering icon, but it never starts again.
It's not a YouTube issue, or there would be posts all over the place about it. Also, if I use Proxfree (a website offering a free YouTube proxy), all YouTube videos start playing instantly and there's no buffering whatsoever, so the issue must be with Virgin Media as they cache YouTube content.
You tube works fine for me. 1080p video plays right away no buffering.