I live in Brazil (300-400 ms) away from bbc.co.uk and use Squid 3.1.14
To get a better experience I use
tcp_recv_bufsize 400000 bytes # yes I know it is huge, can be smaller for you
read_ahead_gap 128 KB
Tuning the above two parameters is recommended for all.
For http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14182135 I do not see
http://82.197.67.173/idle/...
But I see
http://stats.bbc.co.uk/o.gif?...
I use a URL filter to block
stats.bbc.co.uk/o.gif (redirected to a 1x1 gif)
In my experience the video stream is with much less problems if
you block the above.
I am the author of ufdbGuard, a URL filter for Squid, and of course
I also use it at home. The software is free, you can make your own
URL catagory, put the URL stats.bbc.co.uk/o.gif in it and you
effectively block the tracking image.
Other tracking URLs are:
bbc.112.2o7.net/b/ss/...
sa.bbc.co.uk/bbc/bbc/s
b.scorecardresearch.com/b
There are many sites that use tracking URLs/gifs and they can slow
down end user experience.
Marcus
Karl Pielorz wrote:
--On 08 July 2011 12:47 -0300 Marcus Kool <marcus.kool@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Well, I still would like to know the URL because I like to observe
which set of URLs this eventually triggers.
I block with a URL filter some tracker URLs: URLs which are
unnecessary for showing video content but show the content provider
what you are doing. Sometimes these trackers cause hickups.
Any URL on the BBC news site which streams video will do it - e.g.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14182135>
If you're lucky you can watch it all the way through - most times it
stops after a seemingly random amount of time, and displays the
"twirling" buffering logo. You might also then get something like "This
content doesn't seem to be working - try again later".
Bypass squid and it works every time - right to the end.
During streaming the squid access log shows lots of:
"
1310988471.617 276 192.168.0.23 TCP_MISS/200 187 POST
http://82.197.67.173/idle/Cinmdz02zSLOejOD/61 - DIRECT/82.197.67.173
application/x-fcs
1310988472.070 453 192.168.0.23 TCP_MISS/200 187 POST
http://82.197.67.173/idle/Cinmdz02zSLOejOD/62 - DIRECT/82.197.67.173
application/x-fcs
1310988472.906 835 192.168.0.23 TCP_MISS/200 187 POST
http://82.197.67.173/idle/Cinmdz02zSLOejOD/63 - DIRECT/82.197.67.173
application/x-fcs
1310988474.008 1102 192.168.0.23 TCP_MISS/200 187 POST
http://82.197.67.173/idle/Cinmdz02zSLOejOD/64 - DIRECT/82.197.67.173
application/x-fcs
"
These keep running for quite a while even if the streaming has 'stopped'.
Videos from Youtube work fine (as do most other sites) - it only appears
to be the BBC videos that have the issue (or the BBC's iPlayer service -
which is UK only afaik).
Looking around the Web, I did find:
<http://old.nabble.com/RTMPT-fails-randomly-using-squid-proxy-td16570049.html>
I did go as far as commenting out the code that handled the "Suspicious
request - double CR detected" check, but that didn't make any difference
[in fairness I'd not seen any errors logged by squid about 'suspicious'
headers - but that thread does seem to be related to what we're at least
seeing].
I did do some packet captures - around the time things start to play up
I get a 'zero sized reply' error send from Squid to the client - but at
this stage I thought I'd see if anyone else had encountered the issue...
-Karl
