Youtube on iPad not working

[jdell]

Hi everyone,

 

We are getting a content playback error on our iPads and other mobile devices to play youtube clips on them. I have checked our smoothwall and it's not blocking it and all the videos load on our desktop units. I have a feeling its being blocked by our ISP (the County Council Currently). Any ideas of ways to make this work.

 

I tried on a Nexus to force the desktop page but I still got the same issue. I can only assume the devices go elsewhere before youtube to get the video clip or they are using a bespoke port.

 

Any input would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

[supawat1]

Dont use iPad, but have you consider Flash compatibility?

[MrBen85]

I have exactly the same issue. iPads are currently causing the most grief in school. Mostly this particular issue. If I bypass the smoothwall box using different proxy settings (using the authority's smoothwall), I can get it to work, but I don't see what is stopping it running via Smoothwall at this end.

[AngryTechnician]

I'm actually seeing the same symptoms on our iOS devices at the moment. Works fine on our desktops which have exactly the same filtering policy. No block messages being reported, but suspiciously it is logging HTTP 204 (No content) when we try to access a video.

 

I haven't completely ruled out a network issue yet as the iPads access the Smoothwall on a different VLAN, but everything else is working fine. The problem also occurs whether I use a transparent or non-transparent interface.

Edited January 15, 2013 by AngryTechnician

[AngryTechnician]

@AMLightfoot provided the answer here

 

For youtube you need to whitelist c.youtube.com and youtube.com/videoplayback

 

Bear in mind that whitelisting is the important bit (not just allowing) and this may adversely affect other filtering of YouTube. In our case, we use the Youtube for Education HTTP header, and that still applies even with the whitelisting in place.

[mdench]

will have another look at this tomorrow when i can track one of the dam things down

[AngryTechnician]

will have another look at this tomorrow when i can track one of the dam things down

 

I bought an iPod Touch that lives in my desk drawer for this exact reason. I'd have to pry our iPads from the teachers' cold dead fingers in order to try anything otherwise.

[Jackie1960]

I have the same issue on my iPad. I have an iPad 3. Does anyone know how to resolve this issue? Can get so frustrating at times!

[jdell]

From all the work I have done on this we keep getting pushed back round to it being a Firewall issue. When you sit with Putty and watch the Smoothwall unit it is sending all the data out but nothing is passed back. We have so many outstanding issues with our local County Concil IT services because they currently are our ISP and Firewall provider and they lock down everything and charge a fortune to unblock it. We are moving in Feb once I get this done and I can manage the firewall, I will see what I can do and update this post.

 

And just to clarify this is not a device issue or a flash issue.

[MrBen85]

I've tried everything, multiple YouTube URLs, whitelisting etc. No luck. If I use the authorities proxy (still using the same firewall), it works fine. I'm certain the issue lies at the SmoothWall box, but just can't get my head around it. I'll keep testing and trying and will put any of the positive stuff up here. So far it's not been great. Unfortunately, Apple products and proxies are not good friends

[emdrum]

We had issues like this, but we are not using Smoothwall. The issue is that the devices are requesting ranges of ports, which many firewalls do not allow by default. If you can enable port range requests, do so, then try again.

 

Hope that works.

[Marci]

Have a look at http://www.edugeek.net/forums/netbooks-pda-phones/101143-deploying-ios-devices-yhgfl-whitepaper.html

 

The PDF lists all the common ip blocks and ranges

[Danp]

We have found an iPad can work fine for Mail, Internet and App store once connected with proxy details, but many apps dont work inc YouTube because the apps dont use the proxy info and will try and go direct. Give the iPad direct access and everything is fine.