Can't Stream YouTube with PIA MACE ENABLED

OpenVPNOpenVPN
in Software and System Updates
@doaks, I've been experiencing issues playing videos on YouTube with PIA MACE Enabled. Some YouTube videos will not load at all with mace enabled, the only time I am able to watch videos on YouTube is when I go into the settings and disable PIA MACE. I hope I'm not the only one who has experienced this issue. Hopefully you can work with the developers and come up with a fix for this issue.

Comments

  • doaksdoaks
    Hi OpenVPN,

    I've been testing this here on various servers, but I haven't managed to replicate it so far. Could you please pm me the OS/browser you're working on, and the IP of the gateway you're using, so that I can test it out further with the exact settings you're using?
  • nunya_bidnessnunya_bidness
    Hi doaks!

    I have been having the same issue for about a month with youtube and other google services like gmail and google music. With youtube specifically, the page will load but the embedded video will not load. Usually if I leave the page open for about 5-10 minutes the video will finally load.

    Today I was tinkering around with various settings on my computer trying to figure out the issue. I finally disabled PIA MACE and the problem resolved immediately.

    I'm using macOS Sierra (V 10.12.1), Safari (v 10.0.1), connected to the US California gateway.

  • Max-PMax-P
    I don't have a fix yet, but we have actually identified the cause of it!

    The reason is quite simple. The way MACE works is that every time it encounters a known ad domain, the DNS server returns 127.0.0.2 instead of the real IP of that server. The expectation here is that 127.0.0.2 will obviously fail. However it appears that on Mac, when connecting to 127.0.0.2 the packet is just dropped instead of refused, so it takes around 30 seconds for the connection attempt to time out. We haven't reproduced for YouTube specifically, but I can only imagine YouTube is programmed to try a few times before giving up, so the 30 seconds delay is piled up a few times.

    Unfortunately I don't have an ETA for when this will be resolved, especially with the holidays, but it shouldn't be too long. In the meantime I would recommend turning MACE off and using a browser-based ad blocker like the famous uBlock Origin. Sorry for the inconvenience!
  • OpenVPNOpenVPN
    Any updates on when this will be fixed in an upcoming release? Hopefully this issue will be resolved when v67 is released?
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