Afrihost Youtube

Conack

Conack

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Instead of random threads between the Afrihost feedback and other ones like this, I think it's time for a dedicated thread to the Youtube caching / streaming issues on Afrihost for now and future problems should they arise.

Very popular videos stream no problem, but lesser watched videos / uncached videos are mostly unwatchable.
I can also confirm the same problems are seen on wired and wireless devices. (TV boxes, tablets and desktop PCs)

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A few examples:

(Last night's AoE4 stream)

1770731628128.png

Example 2:
A random Rust video with only 900 views. Better:
1770733987267.png
Skip into the video a bit and suddenly the buffer falters:
1770734156139.png


However, older and more popular (cached) videos stream perfectly with a huge buffer:
1770733580666.png

The issue has been ongoing for a couple of months and I'm not keen to start watching Mr Beast videos just to avoid buffering :(
Assistance would be very much appreciated.
 
Tried watching this around 08:40ish this morning and it was impossible. Stopped dead about 2 mins in no buffer no timeline no nothing. 1080>720>480 exactly the same problem. Refresh = 144p and dead again 2 mins in.

Now its fine.

 

Screenshot 2026-02-13 094703.png

This video is buffering for me on 4K.

1 Gig line btw.


102.182.xxx.xx => afrihostza-jnb2 (102.182.144.0/20)
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2026-02-13 095246.png
    Screenshot 2026-02-13 095246.png
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Chris_Auc said:

View attachment 1885787

This video is buffering for me on 4K.

1 Gig line btw.


102.182.xxx.xx => afrihostza-jnb2 (102.182.144.0/20)
Click to expand...

I think it might now be cached as I'm not getting buffering on this video, but it falls in the 5-10 sec buffer zone.

1770974768931.png

As per my previous post, there seems to be 3 "shades" of cache that I'm seeing in general:

Uncached (Lots of buffering)
Semi-cached? ~5 second fluctuating buffer
Fully cached - 20 second buffer solid

I've sent Afrigirl some more info which she requested yesterday so let's see if they can track down the issue.
 
I thought I was going crazy, been seeing this for 2 weeks now, this morning I can't watch any thing even a short buffers longer then what the short is. Basically unusable. @Afrigirl you say you logged it with google? I'm curious people on other ISP are not having this issue, why would this be a google problem? Seems to me to be a ISP problem?

I can add I was fine yesterday entire day no problem, this morning a video I watched half way that was fine yesterday now can't even start playing after minutes of just spinning there.
 
Ferdi Faurie said:
I thought I was going crazy, been seeing this for 2 weeks now, this morning I can't watch any thing even a short buffers longer then what the short is. Basically unusable. @Afrigirl you say you logged it with google? I'm curious people on other ISP are not having this issue, why would this be a google problem? Seems to me to be a ISP problem?

I can add I was fine yesterday entire day no problem, this morning a video I watched half way that was fine yesterday now can't even start playing after minutes of just spinning there.
Click to expand...
Because Afrihost has Google caches and when on their DNS any of your Google traffic will be served from the cache server
 
Ferdi Faurie said:
I thought I was going crazy, been seeing this for 2 weeks now, this morning I can't watch any thing even a short buffers longer then what the short is. Basically unusable. @Afrigirl you say you logged it with google? I'm curious people on other ISP are not having this issue, why would this be a google problem? Seems to me to be a ISP problem?

I can add I was fine yesterday entire day no problem, this morning a video I watched half way that was fine yesterday now can't even start playing after minutes of just spinning there.
Click to expand...
Seems this was already a problem in 2022: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/438894-youtube-streaming-problems-in-south-africa.html
 
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"Despite YouTube automatically switching videos to the lowest quality, they constantly get stuck buffering.

The problem occurs regardless of line speed"

This seems still pending and never fixed.........
 
Me again, just want to check if its just my side, might need to clear cache or something, but today, it plays 2sec buffer 2sec play 2sec, if its just me I'm will to reset all my gear and do a clean shutdown of chrome and restart it, so Do have many many tabs open at one time.
 
None of these issues on CISP.

Just move to a proper ISP already - why stick with a **** provider with **** service???

(Yes I know AH bought CISP - they are still separate entities/networks)
 
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