I'm also experiencing this issue with signifcant frequency. I have Windows 7 64 bit Professional. Quad Core, 8 GB Ram with a SSD. I do have Verizon FiOS with a 35 Mb connection (both download and upload) The issue happens on both IE 9.0.8812.16421 and Google Chrome 14.0.835.202. Refereshing does not guarantee that the problem will not repeat itself. I can duplicate this problem in both youtube and cnn.com videos such as the one below. I do have flash 11.0.1.152 installed on my computer. I have confirmed that both sites are using Flash (by right clicking on applet and seeing Flash version. On youtube, it seems to happen for videos of 480p quality or higher. On CNN, I do not get to choose the quality of the video or know how to tell you the quality of video (it states optimizing video, so it may be internet speed dependant?).
If you are fast enough to click just a little bit past the buffering spot when the video is buffering, you can continue watching the video. If not, on the CNN site, I get "Video is no longer available". On the youtube, it sometimes recovers and goes into a play, buffer, play loop. Other times, I get the issue noted earlier where you click the bar later in the video and it backtracks without advancing. Even though, on YouTube, it appears that the rest of the video has been downloaded (via the gray bar).
speedtest.net confirmed my bandwidth is working at close to the marketed 35 Mb connection rate for both upload and download
I also did experience a hanging issue with an Adobe Flash App (non video) on pingtest.net. Running this a second time completed the test. The results were 1 ms jitter and an A line quality. I think these are about as close to ideal as expected.
It also should be noted that there are a lot of youtube slow threads such as the one noted below that is within the last week. It might be entirely possible that there problem is related to this. So, the SCOPE MAY BE QUITE LARGE and MAY BE AFFECTING A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF USERS. I found those threads by a simple "youtube slow" google query and narrowed the results to the last week.
please email me at the email address in my registered profile if you'd like any additional information from me in regards to solving this issue. I will no longer have access to my FiOS internet connection for the next 2 weeks so I won't be able to test under the same conditions.
Also, I am a new verizon FiOS customer so I can not confirm whether or not I experienced this problem with the previous version of Flash. With the exception of constant virus updates in Windows Update, my computer is fully up to date for Windows Update with a last scan date of yesterday 10/14/2011 at 9:00 AM.
Previously thinking that the problem may be ISP related, I have escalated my concern to their networking team to make sure everything is setup and working correctly. Their resolution date for that task is set to be towards the end of this month. However, based on the research done tonight, I believe that the stronger case can be made for it being related to Flash version 11.
YouTube Slow Thread:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=682f84afbfb82 bdb&hl=en
CNN Video Link:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2011/10/13/jvm-ca-salon-shootin g-salveson.hln
Broadband Speed Test:
Below follows the results of the Verizon Speed Test to confirm that my line quality is good. I think sender limited at 82% means my computer is pretty much receiving the data as fast as the website is sending it.
Analysis information:
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
SendBufferSize set to [261360]
running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 29.31Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 32.35Mb/s
------ Client System Details ------
OS data: Name = Windows 7, Architecture = x86, Version = 6.1
Java data: Vendor = Sun Microsystems Inc., Version = 1.6.0_26
------ Web100 Detailed Analysis ------
Client Receive Window detected at 261360 bytes.
45 Mbps T3/DS3 link found.
Link set to Full Duplex mode
No network congestion discovered.
Good network cable(s) found
Normal duplex operation found.
Web100 reports the Round trip time = 55.73 msec; the Packet size = 1452 Bytes; and
There were 177 packets retransmitted, 4 duplicate acks received, and 179 SACK blocks received
The connection was idle 0 seconds (0%) of the time
This connection is receiver limited 8.14% of the time.
This connection is sender limited 82.48% of the time.
This connection is network limited 9.37% of the time.
Web100 reports TCP negotiated the optional Performance Settings to:
RFC 2018 Selective Acknowledgment: ON
RFC 896 Nagle Algorithm: ON
RFC 3168 Explicit Congestion Notification: OFF
RFC 1323 Time Stamping: OFF
RFC 1323 Window Scaling: ON
Information: Network Middlebox is modifying MSS variable
Server IP addresses are preserved End-to-End
Information: Network Address Translation (NAT) box is modifying the Client's IP address
