My first blog post in three years has been a crazy ride. It blew up all over the web, and I’m humbled. A big thanks to everyone from HackerNews, Reddit, and most recently YouTube. Really glad this helped a lot of you guys.
The biggest question I’ve had so far is “how can I get this to work on Windiows?”, and I am back to answer that. I’ve written a guide how to block the CDN IP ranges from the command prompt on Windows, so it should work on all versions (Windows 7, Windows XP, and others). That said, I run a Mac as my primary computer and I welcome any feedback from the Windows gurus out there.
Just like yesterday’s post, you will have blazingly fast Youtube streaming (and Twitch.tv) by running a few commands to reject certain IP addresses. Also, remember that this will cause the stream to take 1-2 seconds to start because of the IP block handling, but then you are greeted with a silky smooth, ultra fast experience.
Enough talking. Here’s what you need to do:
- Click the Start button, type “cmd”, and right click the icon to ‘Run As Administrator’ (Screenshot 1)
- You will likely see a UAC prompt, hit “Yes” (Screenshot 2)
- The command prompt window will open, this is where you will type in the commands to set your firewall rules (Screenshot 3)
- Enter the following command and hit Enter. If it works, you should see a big “OK”.
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="MITCHRIBARYTUBE" dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes
Rules can be easily removed too. Just get back into the command prompt in the same way and run this command, hit Enter again:
netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name="MITCHRIBARYTUBE"
Did this trick work for you? Let me know in the comments below, Windows users!
EDIT (Feb 27, 2013): I’ve updated the blog with a new add rule command that’s lets you use one line instead of two. Thanks to Darren for the tip!
it works really well!
Thank you! Finally Time Warner is usable again for watching online video.
I had to enter the command twice (once as stated above and once for the IP second IP address mentioned in your first article on topic) but after the second entry, YouTube runs as it should. To be clear, here are the two commands you’ll need to run at a command prompt:
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”MITCHRIBARYTUBE” dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”MITCHRIBARYTUBE” dir=in action=block remoteip=206.111.0.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes
- Happy surfing TWC users…
Thank you I have an HP Pavilion g6 running Windows 7and it ran Youtube perfectly at work, but at how where I have Timer Warner with turbo it would stop and stutter. This solution worked perfectly once I figured out how to get t o the administrative cmd. THANK YOU!
Thank you so much!
Nope, it didn’t work for me :(
Anyway, if you want to try the IPSEC method yourself, check this user comment:
http://dottech.org/103278/how-to-make-youtube-videos-load-faster-on-windows-mac-os-x-linux-guide/comment-page-1/#comments
Anyone found a way to do this in Windows XP? It doesn’t support the advfirewall function. For reasons too complicated to explain here, I can’t block the ports at my router either.
This trick doesn’t work on XP because the default Windows Firewall doesn’t have “advfirewall” option.
I’m trying, however, the IPSEC policy method suggested elsewhere, so I’ll let you know.
Thanks! It works fine for many videos, anyway some others still has issues and are stuck at 144p or 240p, could this be because they don’t use any of these two IP’s? Is there any other know IP that we can add to this firewall rule in order to have ALL videos working fine? Thanks again!
I’ve followed the guide and it works perfectly on many videos! On some though, it doesen’t seem to “kick in”, I still got stuck at 240p or even 144p! Maybe they don’t use those 2 IP? Are there any other that we can add to the rule in order to work for all videos? Many thanks!
works instantly thanks alot!!!
THX it worked just fine!
worked for me! FIOS stinks!!
Thanks for the guide!
I have TWC, and youtube is often nearly unwatchable (even in non-HD). My solution has been to use an off-site VPN, and youtube becomes magically watchable again in 1080p.
Ran the command, double checked to make sure the inbound IP was blocked, and still no luck. Starting to wonder if Time Warner has caught on.. anyone else getting this? Wish I’d found this a lot earlier!
yeah, no luck here either. vpn does the trick, but why should have to do that?
Oh wow! This worked. Your instructions were simple to follow.
Thank you a lot! It has worked very good so far!
Works awesomely! :)
Worked here. Tyvm!
Funcionou aqui, muito obg!
Win8 x64
Vivo Cable 20MB
Brazil
Thank you very much man, this worked great for me.
Works amazingly well with YouTube, but twitch.tv is still having massive problems.
Works for me as well.
How can we do it in Windows XP
Did you find how to do it in Windows XP ?
Thanks
For Linux and Mac you have mitchribar DOT com/2013/02/time-warner-cable-sucks-for-youtube-twitchtv/
I just found this. Was always suspicious about throttling and switching to FiOS confirmed it had to be happening. Tried with both IPs first and had no effect. Deleted the second one, as suggested in the original article comments. Works great. And I agree that there should be lawsuits on the matter. Thanks!
Worked perfectly for me. I was having issues while playing youtube videos. I was getting black screen only and the video wasn’t playing at all. With the trick … oh! Thank you very much for the nice trick :)
oh really miss beautiful :)
I still retain lots of issues with Twitch.tv. It worked well at first, but now it is just as bad as before I implemented this fix. Any chance they duplicated the server over to a new IP? YouTube works okay for my connection still.
I’m using a Netgear WNDR4300 Router, using my routers firewall is it possible to create the same rule?
Is it the WNDR4300, or the WNDR3400? I have the WNDR3400, and I would like to know how you do this.
I cant thank you enough for the last 5month YT has been a nightmare 98% of the videos was unplayable due to some sort of buffering, stuttering it seems they where some how throttling the speed now if I used YT at the crazy hours of 2am all the videos where playable ! thanks to you I can now pay ALL videos in full 1080p something that was imposable to do, location Europe
Mitch, I use a VPN for work. I’ve got a 30/5 plan with Time Warner but my speeds drop to 1.5/.8 when I’m on VPN. Our engineers have sort of given up on this but a friend suggested that TWC may be throttling encrypted traffic. Any thoughts on that and on mitigation? thanx. bb
Me funcionó. Muchas gracias.
Wow 2 years later i finally found that my system is ok and the bandwidth has been sucked away by another source, thanks dear thanks God Bless You
Interesting thing: I don’t have Windows Firewall service active. I wondered if this would work, because of the firewall rules being set. I tried the steps, again without having windows firewall service active, and you know what? It works awesome!!
I didn’t try turning on Windows Firewall to test that, since it seems to be working great for me already. BTW, on Windows 7 Ult x64, so it works on that!
This Worked Perfectly. A Much Better Difference Than Before On My Windows 7 OS. Thanks.
Thanks much Mitch! Worked like a charm
Worked wonderfully here in Sweden. Thanks alot for the tip!
Its guys like you we need on youtube and not these darn time wasters who all seem to have angermanagement issues!
worked nice thanks!
Verizon FIOS 75/35, could barely watch the lowest res videos before, now I can watch full HD movies with zero freezes! Here’s to hoping I don’t run into some of the problems others are having. Thank you very much Mitch!
It’s crazy how well this works. Thanks!
After this initially worked for me, it then didn’t. :( However, I kept Googling and found this and it seems to be working so far (at least for me). If you right click on any YT video and then click on settings then UNCHECK the ‘Enable hardware acceleration’. So far so good but that’s what I said about blocking the IPs.
Hi, thank you so much for finding this!
I blocked the ip ranges in my D-Link router. It doesn’t support the use of /24 /16 so I entered these ranges instead:
173.194.55.0 – 173.194.55.254
206.111.0.0 – 206.111.255.254
Is this correct?
I’m no expert so would be great if anyone could verify this!
/24 and /16 are your subnet masks /24 is 255.255.255.0 and /16 is 255.255.0.0
After I did this youtube’s “show video info” window was reporting a solid ~13000kb/s down. However after a few days it dropped the the old throttling speeds of ~600kb/s down. It’s impossible to watch 360p videos. On the other hand I can download other things at 2MB/s. I’m about to drop twc.
Is there a way to set this up at the router level?
This worked perfectly. Thanks.
unfortunately, didn’t work, Windows firewall is replaced by Kaspersky firewall on my computer
works great! How can one do this for Android Verizon phones/tablets??? anyone? anyone??
Looks like ISP Caught on… I can’t even render 480 decently anymore…
Yep, same here. Now if I block those IP address ranges, the video will never queue, and it will give a “There was an error” message in the video. However, when I enable them, Youtube works fine. Maybe TimeWarner realized that people will just find a workaround for their nonsense. Then again, its TWC, so probably not.
This worked perfectly for a short while. I hadn’t seen YouTube buffer so quickly in months and I was able to watch HD videos (as I SHOULD be able to with a high bandwidth connection and like I CAN on EVERY SINGLE OTHER VIDEO SITE I’VE EVER ENCOUNTERED) without any interruption whatsoever. It’s not working any more. I’m back to buffering every few seconds making most videos unwatchable. I tried deleting the rule and then adding it again. No effect. WHAT HAPPENED?! *bangs head on wall* Any ideas?
ISP caught on? I don’t know. But there really should be some sort of lawsuit against ISP’s that do this. Youtube is my #1 site that I go to for videos and I can barely do that. Maybe Google can sue ISP’s for causing them to lose ad revenue? Or maybe we can sue ISP’s for making our lives miserable…
I am also having the same problem…can we get an update? Thanks
Seems like it stopped working
Is there anyway to get this to work on the PS3 and or cell phone?
IF YOU WERE A CHICK I’D MARRY YOU ! THANKS ALOTS !!!!!
Amazing! Works perfectly!! Didn’t think it’d work, but it did and its so simple, just copy/paste, bravo
Worked for me on Verizon FiOS! Before I had trouble even when reducing the quality down to 240p. Now 1080p loads completely in seconds. Thanks a lot!
….speechless. This makes youtube just work. Even at 1080p, no buffering. One of the better tips I have come across online in long while.
THANK YOU.
i love you
GENIUS! I cannot believe this worked. I’ve been Googling for an answer for nigh on a month now. BRILLIANT! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
I did this and it worked AWESOME the first night, then the next day i went to watch a stream on Twitch and the lag started again. Any suggestions?
unfortunately, it isn’t working for me. I’m positive I did everything correctly, but I’m still having trouble with even 240p videos, and it’s not like my connection is terrible, it’s good enough to play online fps games.
I’m not normally one to believe these sorts of things, but I saw a lot of buzz about it, and I decided “Eh I’ll try it real quick”… THANK YOU MITCH
I’ve gone from buffering in 720p to being just shy of having to buffer in a 4096p test video.
I kid you not, this really did improve my download speeds immensely.
Holy crap.. It worked so far… Amazing dif..
BTW – Verizon FIOS – 75/35mb….
So far so good =). ty vm, been getting really frustrated with this for the past few months. Girlfriend kept saying it must be our isp, but I wasn’t convinced, since it happened to me at work also.
THIS IS AMAZING I CAN WATCH HD STREAMS NOW AND NOT LAG :D
Thank you!