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[shawnl01]

It recently came to my attention that youtube videos have a lot of problems without buffering again.  After poking around with a video running at 720p, I found the issue to be the gamefuel.  if it's completely turned off, the video will play flawlessly.  If I enable it with everything checked or nothing checked but enabling it; then it has to buffer 3-4 times for a 2 minute video. 

Does anyone know the settings needed to get the gamefuel to work with Youtube?  I'd rather leave the letting on in case something throttles my internet connection.

I'm using Comcast cable.  Speedtest.net listed the upload at 5.7mb so maybe it's not needed anymore. 

[Trikein]

Just set a gamefuel rule for port TCP 80 with a Priority of around 75.(Under 115, above 50) Assign it to the IP of your PC

[LookIntoMyEyees]

It is not the upload speed that counts but rather the download speed. Trikein strikes again with a right answer, you need to set up priority for youtube. I am not sure at what port Etc but follow Trikein and use TCP port 80. The only reason gamefuel slows down youtube is because you don't have enough bandwidth in download to support it and other devices connecting on the network. Can you verify and tell me if you are the only one on the network and youtube still loads slow?

--
Chris

[shawnl01]

Maybe it's the videos I'm playing on youtube.  I disabled the gamefuel and ran a test on speedtest.net.  It came back with the following results:

Ping 7ms
Download 16.09MB
Upload 5.97

Enabled Gamefuel and ran the test again.

8ms
18.05MB
4.39MB

I do have several network devices (consoles, phones, printers, etc) but the router reports an average of about 30kb recieve on it when things are idle.  The router is chained to a 8port gigabit switch that houses all the wired devices and reports a 20k recieve on the router when I disconnect it.

Anyway; further watching of videos appears to be a problem with the video's we've tried to watch.  It does seem to play better with the gamefuel disabled but the same videos are capped at 1mb on the router recieve no matter what I choose.  Other videos have gotten up to 5MB recieve and don't stutter at all. 

So I must just have a bad choice in video selection.

I tried the port 80 trick with all 65000 ports for remote.  It didn't make a difference. 

[zippoking]

A particular game is one thing, but for something so general like youtube that could easily be desired from many devices on the network, wouldn't setting up a rule for 1 IP address as a solution be not so great?  There has to be a more generic way to use the gamefuel rules I would hope.  I ran into this same thought process when thinking about 2 people playing the same game on one network.

[FurryNutz]

My pc's aren't using game fuel rules and really have never seen any bad video response from them. I've mostly seen intermittent video coming from youtube mostly. All the tons of videos they have, theres bound to be a few that are not the greatest.

[Trikein]

Ok ok. I will give a more complete answer. First some background. And you thought it was just click and play :-) Actually, it gets even more complicated then even that article makes it, but that should give a general understanding.

Heres the three important things to remember there:

1. Flash handles sound and video seperatly.
2. Flash downloads and renders each frame before going to the next.
3. Flash uses a kind of shorthand so that common factors from frame to frame can be reference without downloading and rendering from scratch.

So now your issue. You play a movie, it goes along then has to rebuffer at a certian point. You turn off Gamefuel, try again with the same movie and it doesn't need to rebuffer. First remeber that the movie is stored as cache on your computer. So turning off gamefuel and trying to replay the same movie is going to give you a false positive, because a good chunk of the movie has already downloaded and rendered. Now if you tried it later, there can also be issues, because the streaming rate is very dependent on the number of people trying to stream that movie. Last, when you reload a movie, it defaults to its lowest resolution. So if you play a movie at 720, turn off gamefuel, then reload, it will most likly play at 480 or less, which is alot less strain on your connection.

So lets assume none of those issues were factors. If the only common issue is gamefuel on and off, then there is some traffic on your network that Gamefuel is giving a higher priorty then HTML (Port 80). You can either slow that service down (or remove the gamefuel rule if you have one configured) or add a rule to speed that traffic type up. Now you don't have to set a specific IP to a Gamefuel rule, you can use a range. And if you want all HTML traffic on your network to take priority then try this:

Enable: Checked
Name: HTML
Priority: 75 (Or lower then what ever you want it faster then, but don't set below 50)
Protocol: 6 (TCP)
Local IP Range: 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.199
Local Port Range: 80 to 80
Remote IP Range: 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255
Remote Port Range: 80 to 80

Notice it's ok to use a broad sweep for the Remote IP range since this is a prioritization rule, and not a forwarding rule, so it doesn't bypass your firewall or NAT.  AKA, its safe. Now if your looking for Gamefuel to not automatically classify HTML a lower priority, then thats a valid point, but one that is not fixable I believe without a firmware update.

Oh, almost forgot. Also, just because you have a fast connection to the internet, doesn't mean you have a fast connection to youtube.  A good test to take is this one. That just gives you a idea of your connection to youtube. To see your connection to a certain video, right click on the video. (the flash video, not the link) and left click on "Show video Info". All kinds of goodies there aye?

[Reinvented]

That's a really long post there Trikein...

You don't need to make a GameFuel rule for it...at all.  Seriously. 

If you DO leave GameFuel enabled, you should make sure you un-check the Dynamic Fragmentation.  I've used the DGL's for a while now, and I've almost always had problems with streaming any HD of any sort with that enabled.  Don't even bother with Automatic uplink either, as you should just set that manually.  So, if you're at 25 Mbps, then set it for 25000. 

128 is normal priority.  Anything below 100 is...well, not necessary.  You can easily starve other applications and stuff that way, and increase error rate very easily. 

Heck, if it's still giving you problems change your DNS to OpenDNS.  Something faster.

[Trikein]

Hmm, well dynamic frag and auto upload effect upload, which has no bearing for streaming media at all. That is downloading. In that same way, once you get to the site, DNS has no effect either. OpenDNS is good, but its actually almost identical to AdvancedDNS(same company, different servers) that the DGL has intergrated into it. Yes, if your DNS servers have outdated records, then you might get the wrong IP and be streaming from a server that isn't preferable (say West Coast, your East Coast) but not that often. The OP was how would Gamefuel effect the streaming of content on Youtube. Thats a complicated question, so I thought it deserved a complicated answer. Yes, you are right,a Gamefuel rule probably isn't needed, but I was giving a solution to the problem he stated with the feature. I respect your opinion though, just felt the need to defend my own. ::Faunz thumbs up::

[FurryNutz]

I should mention that I typed a typo in my response to the OP and wanted to say that my PCs don't use a gamefuel rule...

[Trikein]

Et tu Furry? ::grin::

Except for my PS3, I don't have them either. But ok, so what is the answer then? If he is having issue with streaming video when Gamefuel is enabled, then the only options I see is disable it, or set up a rule to bypass it. Its either that or human error.  I welcome, no I encourage, critique of any advice I give, but I also welcome input. :-)