Hey folks,
I have an OPNsense router that has lately been causing me a lot of trouble. Whenever I'm browsing YouTube trying to watch videos, it takes a really long time to load and even pops up a "YouTube is offline" message.
I have diagnosed that the issue is coming from the network, as it happens to all devices (Wi-Fi and LAN). When using a cellular network on my phone or a hotspot, this doesn't happen.
My current setup is: ISP (FTTH) -> Router (SFP port - PPPoE) -> Main switch -> LAN + Wi-Fi.
I'm using Unbound on both Cloudflare and Google DNS, and Dnsmasq for DHCP. There are no VLAN definitions or anything configured to block traffic on the main LAN network.
I would really appreciate the help!
YT is known to be hostile toward ad blockers and certain browsers (e.g. Firefox). I had this problem even with my old Asus router so I'm not convinced that it's a network issue on the client side, but I'm happy to be wrong about this.
The platform wants you to be friendly to their revenue stream so ideally you are using Chrome and you are not filtering ads. Personally that's not my cuppa tea for browsing, so I just deal with the YT service disruptions and occasional loading delays.
Some things to check/try:
Is your Unbound set up with DNSBLs? Do you see the same issue with Chrome manually set to 8.8.8.8 in DNS settings (and not redirected by OPNsense)?
i dont have any blocklist setup currently, this occurs on multiple devices (chrome, youtube app etc)
I've read some threads on here (don't have the links handy) about people having connectivity issues with Microsoft sites/services that are worked around with MSS clamping. I wonder if YT might also be impacted by some kind of MTU issue.
The other thing I can think of that might be contributing is this: https://github.com/opnsense/src/issues/254
Are you using IPv6? Have you tried over IPv4?
This is anecdotal, but I recently changed my configuration to use NPTv6 which has the side effect that my outbound traffic is now preferring IPv4. Since then, I do see a decrease in the instances of YT freezing or giving me connection error popups. Maybe a nothingburger; maybe not.