topic Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked in General Topics

youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 18:40:39 GMT

Does anyone know how to get around this? We have enable web-advertisements to be blocked within our URL filering. When going to www.youtube.com and some other sites, the site is there but will not play content.

Any ideas how to get the best of both worlds? Block web-ads but be able to use youtube?

Thanks!

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

skrall — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:15:01 GMT

If you look at the traffic logs and the URL logs you will probably discover that some of the content is being hosted by a "content delivery network". You can use the CLI command "test url <some.name.here.com>" and see what the site classifies as. (Shopping, Web Ads, etc). At this point you can creat an exception and allow trafficto this url, or if you feel the catagory is wrong you can suggest a new catagory at www.brightcloud.com. Or you can change the catagory that is causing you problems to "allow".

Steve Krall

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:40:21 GMT

we want to block web-ads. when it is set to block, youtube becomes useless. when it is set to allow, it is usable.

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:42:03 GMT

Furthermore, when I do add an exception to allow youtube, it still does the same thing.

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

wtam608 — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:48:27 GMT

Your exception needs to be the CDN URL, not youtube.com.

Steve Krall

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:59:16 GMT

Steve, thanks for all of your help with this. youtube falls into the category of 'streaming-media', in which we allow.

as soon as I allow 'web-advertisements' within our url filter, youtube will work. as soon as I block web ads, it no longer works.

I have enter an exception in the url filter to allow www.youtube.com, and it still does not work.

does this make sense?

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:01:29 GMT

I have a feeling that this is a 'youtube' thing not a Palo Alto thing. I have tested with using the web-ad blocker within firefox and have experienced the same thing.

I just thought that PAN would have a work around for this.

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

wtam608 — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:09:38 GMT

Kamish,

This is a common issue that can be resolved with an exception but th exception will be a strange looking url from a CDN provider.

I am assuming you have a test PC and you know the IP address. Turn off the URL filter for web ads. Then go to youtube. Then look at the traffic logs for that IP address. heck the "Resolve DNS Names" box. You should see one stream to youtube and another stream from your test IP address to some other URL. This second URL is the site being blocked and needs to be added as an exception.

You should also b able to confirm that this URL is the one being blocked in the "URL Filtering" logs on the Monitor Tab.

Steve Krall

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:21:35 GMT

Still doesn't work. youtube is not being blocked, but rather being deemed useless when someone surfs to it. see the image that is attached.

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:28:37 GMT

Basically any site that is 'flash' based has the same effect when the web-ads are blocked. for instance www.sears.com has the same effect. But as soon as we allow ads, they function normally. I would probably attribute this to being that web-ads are predominantly flash based, and since youtube is also flash based it doesn't work.

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:37:46 GMT

Ok, 'any' was a bad choice of wordage. It is not any website with flash, just some.

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:02:23 GMT

After spending time on the phone with PAN support, apparently if you block web-advertisements within your URL filter, YOUTUBE will not work. It doesn't block the website, simply renders it useless.

Even entering the cdn url(s) in to the exception list, does not work. Youtube makes it's money through ads, so if you don't view the ads, then they don't let you view their content.

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:52:07 GMT

Anyone else have any suggestions? Have called support and gotten no help. Even tried to get help from our rep, and didn't fix. I think that there is a misconception here...Youtube does not get blocked! It is rendered useless. I have even put in an application override for youtube-base, and it works then, but then the web-advertisements return even with the URL filter set to block them

Re: youtube won't work with web-advertisements being blocked

kamish — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:31:37 GMT

Further testing results...

If I browse to youtube with https, it works as it should

If I browse to youtube with http, it does not work.

I would prefer to use https anyway on our network!