Why is Youtube being super slow?

[Polarthief]

Try different browsers and see if that makes a difference in performance.

I put this in the OP but I guess you missed it; already tried two other browsers. Not a single change.

Even though I'm in the same geographical location and have the same ISP as you OP, I'm inclined to say this is an issue on youtube's part. Videos everywhere else run fine, and my speedtest came normal.

Florida and UVerse? Weird, isn't it?

My Speedtest also comes up fine; ~22-25 down with ~2-4 up.

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 06:24 PM ----------

Youtube is in development to make another horrible video viewing setup, that's why.

The sad part is I would NOT be surprised.

You know, if they could at LEAST add a fucking auto-replay button, I wouldn't care how horrible it was. It only took them most of the time through this recent change to make it so clicking "my subscriptions" brings you to "Uploads only" first.

Granted, I could always do "youtuberepeat.com/______" to replay, but you would think someone at Youtube?Google/whereever would go "Hey, maybe we should be progressive with all the other user-created content sites and add a damn auto-replay button".

[Deleted]

I've been having this problem for the past two weeks. Not a constant problem, but once in a while the videos load very slow, or start with 240p instead of 480p.

[RicardoZ]

It's been behaving slower than normal for me as well. Usually I can watch 1080p without an issue, but the last couple weeks have been very bad in the youtube department.

Everything else is running normally.

[Tomana]

But why all of a sudden? We changed providers in December from Comcast (no issues with Youtube specifically, but don't get me started on THEIR service...) to AT&T U-Verse (PS: Loving the switch). It's now February.

Maybe because it's the week-end, or you happen to be on a "bad" net segment, it can be for a variety of reasons. But a lot of providers are doing that.

[Polarthief]

Maybe because it's the week-end, or you happen to be on a "bad" net segment, it can be for a variety of reasons. But a lot of providers are doing that.

Mmm, didn't know Wednesday counts as the weekend

(I said this started about 4 days ago. It was just before Valentine's)

What's a "bad" net segment?

[Dr. Max Del]

I put this in the OP but I guess you missed it; already tried two other browsers. Not a single change.



Florida and UVerse? Weird, isn't it?

My Speedtest also comes up fine; ~22-25 down with ~2-4 up.

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 06:24 PM ----------



The sad part is I would NOT be surprised.

You know, if they could at LEAST add a fucking auto-replay button, I wouldn't care how horrible it was. It only took them most of the time through this recent change to make it so clicking "my subscriptions" brings you to "Uploads only" first.

Granted, I could always do "youtuberepeat.com/______" to replay, but you would think someone at Youtube?Google/whereever would go "Hey, maybe we should be progressive with all the other user-created content sites and add a damn auto-replay button".

that my subscriptions thing is so annoying. and yeah i have been wondering if it was youtube being slow. course ive always my faulted connectivity problems to my 300kb/sec connection...
first job i get im taking over the internet bill mom.

well at least we got sorting back...

and a special hey pewpew from ddrmaxdel! XD

[FoxStar85]

I'm having the same issue. I can't even play 240p sometimes.

I use AT&T DSL...but when I switch to my iPhone 5, everthing is fine.

I can watch 480p, but I'm afraid to test at 1080p.

[Polarthief]

that my subscriptions thing is so annoying. and yeah i have been wondering if it was youtube being slow. course ive always my faulted connectivity problems to my 300kb/sec connection...
first job i get im taking over the internet bill mom.

well at least we got sorting back...

and a special hey pewpew from ddrmaxdel! XD

Granted, I use my Mozilla favorites toolbar all the time. My Youtube button is the URL to my subs' uploads so I don't have to deal with that bullshit.

Lol, that's pretty bad. Granted, it's not my connection. Trust me.


Oh so now we're connecting through MMO-Champ/WoW, too? *Chuckle* You haven't been on in so long that I had to check my RID to remind myself who you were (though in the end I remembered)

[Bigbamboozal]

Has anyone contacted youtube directly to talk about this?

[Polarthief]

Has anyone contacted youtube directly to talk about this?

IS there a way to do so?

[Crystality]

It might have been just a coincidence; however, ipconfig /flushdns fixed the problem for me today.

[Polarthief]

It might have been just a coincidence; however, ipconfig /flushdns fixed the problem for me today.

Would you mind explaining this in a bit more detail? Would like to try it myself.

[Arrowspace]

Same problem here, for about the same amount of time (last 3-4 days). I'm in Virginia, USA, my ISP is Verizon/Fios (25mbps down).

The last 4-6 months, Youtube has been slowly going downhill in terms of buffering speed, but it's never been this bad. For the past few days, about 50% of Youtube videos are absolutely unwatchable, no matter the quality setting. It's been driving me crazy, though I'm comforted knowing it's not just a problem with my location/ISP.

Youtube hasn't been doing themselves any favors lately...

[mmines]

Mine periodically goes slow at least once every month it seems. I remember when Videos just would not load in 360p but 480p and up they would load no problem. Youtube can be weird sometimes.

---------- Post added 2013-02-17 at 01:53 AM ----------

Has anyone contacted youtube directly to talk about this?

I'm sure they know about it, however I've seen instances of them not fixing something for a while unless it costs them money so who knows if they'll do anything about it for a while. Or it's just something out of their control.

[Noomz]

Just to make sure, I've checked my internet at least three times. Everything else runs fine and smooth with the exception of about 50% of Youtube videos. I didn't have any problems until just a few days ago, and now it's deciding to be slow as hell. Tried multiple browsers; Mozilla being my default; tried IE6 and Chrome, all resulting in the same outcome.

Is anyone else having the same problem where Youtube's being slow? (And I mean REALLY slow. Videos that would work fine from loading the URL in 720p now have to buffer in 240p...) Are they having a week-long maintenance or something?

PS: Yes, it's JUST Youtube. Having no other issues with other sites videos or anything else that uses Internet.

You are not alone with this problem. People with 100mb lines have issues loading videos that are just a few minutes long.

Youtube are messing up. And no, no-one give me that crap about there being millions of videos, they make so much money that it should really not be an issue, ever.

They're cheaping out. They're messing up.

[Polarthief]

Well it's 4AM here, and that Game Grumps video I mentioned earlier is giving me 0 trouble now.

... Same with the AH video. Huh.

Let's try a tracert.

Tracing route to youtube.com [173.194.46.0]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 5 ms 7 ms 6 ms homeportal [192.168.1.254]
2 38 ms 30 ms 32 ms 99-72-164-2.lightspeed.miamfl.sbcglobal.net [99.
72.164.2]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 29 ms 27 ms 27 ms 12.83.70.9
5 33 ms 28 ms 38 ms 12.122.155.177
6 34 ms 27 ms 27 ms 12.250.187.10
7 29 ms 29 ms 27 ms 209.85.253.118
8 56 ms 56 ms 57 ms 72.14.233.108
9 57 ms 56 ms 56 ms 209.85.240.79
10 57 ms 58 ms 56 ms dfw06s27-in-f0.1e100.net [173.194.46.0]

Trace complete.

... Huh, interesting. The ping is much better, but I'm still getting that time out on #3.

[Deleted]

Youtube has been pretty slow for me the past few weeks, although lately I've been having a problem with chrome and flash... I somehow have two versions of flash running at the same time, one located in chrome's folder and one in macromedia's folder. This makes flash crash constantly and I can't turn either off because they turn themselves on again...

[Tomana]

What's a "bad" net segment?

Well since IP addresses are dynamic most of the time (at least in EU, dunno about ISP policies in US), you can simply be stuck on a sub-network with people who stream/download a lot. Then the ISP throttles this segment so it does not eat too much bandwidth. In short, it can be a million things and most providers do it from time to time, especially with streaming platforms such as youtube.

[Polarthief]

Well since IP addresses are dynamic most of the time (at least in EU, dunno about ISP policies in US), you can simply be stuck on a sub-network with people who stream/download a lot. Then the ISP throttles this segment so it does not eat too much bandwidth. In short, it can be a million things and most providers do it from time to time, especially with streaming platforms such as youtube.

Is there anything I could do on my side? Change my IP address or some other crap I could mess with? (Seriously, I know shit about computers other than software/building them >.>)

[Theodon]

Is there anything I could do on my side? Change my IP address or some other crap I could mess with? (Seriously, I know shit about computers other than software/building them >.>)

Usually your IP address is static, so you can't change it. If your ISP has given you a dynamic IP address then you can turn your router off for a while, then turn it back on, to get a different public IP adress.