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Like me, some people may be constrained by the monthly cap they can consume the Internet usage. Thus, my question is,

Will replaying YouTube videos again cost you twice the network usage? I always assumed that once that I've played it, it'd be cached on my machine locally, so it won't consume any more network traffic to reply it again right afterward (without closing and re-opening the video).

However, the answer to question Can you tell by the network traffic whether a video was watched or downloaded from YouTube? seems to reveal otherwise:

  • replaying YouTube videos again will cost you twice the network usage; once more will triple the network usage
  • simply jumping back to rewind to an earlier spot might cost your network usage as well, if it falls off that internal buffer range.

Is it true, or is it still true, or I'm interpreting it incorrectly?

Thanks

Community
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xpt
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1 Answers1

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Experience shows that "usual size" videos are cached in the browser and do not cause any further traffic for replay, so you can replay them or seek in them without generating further traffic.

As a visual hint the player shows with grey stripe where the video is already downloaded (and cached) in your browser; when the grey doesn't disappear (go back to black) it should stay cached and should not cause any traffic.

I am using the HTML5 player but this ought to stand for the flash-based player as well.

(However changing resolution require different chunks and cause them to be downloaded.)

grin
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