Broadband Tech > General Questions > Youtube videos are slow

Youtube videos are slow

If your browser supports HTML5 you can opt into the experimental HTML5 video playback on YouTube. Not only will you get smoother video playback—goodbye Flash!—but you'll be able to speed up and slow down your videos.

reply to fartness
Youtube, as with most other streaming media, is delivered over a content distribution network (CDN). This keeps the bulk of streaming traffic off the regular Internet and utilizes a preferred connection arrangements to the ISP's internal network. It is ultimately up to your ISP to decide if they want to utilize these preferred private arrangements.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_de···_network

Here is a study a while back about YouTube
»www.itc23.com/fileadmin/ITC23_fi···s/a5.pdf

Are you using the DNS servers provided by your ISP or running third party DNS? If you are running third party DNS try switching to your ISP's DNS. Third party DNS is not aware of any special arraignments your ISP has (if any) with a particular CDN. They will resolve a valid IP to obtain the data but it may be delivered over a slower or more congested path then if you use your ISP's DNS.

Or it may be the case the videos you are streaming are on servers that are heavily loaded. Or it may be the peering arrangement your ISP is using happens to be congested on the route used to access the particular youtube servers.

/tom

Great document...nice find.

reply to tschmidt
That probably explains it with the DNS servers. I use Google's, since my ISP's DNS servers are garbage. I'll try switching back temporarily and seeing if it makes a difference.

reply to fartness
Didn't make a difference changing to my ISP's DNS servers. Seems slower actually.

I have a major ISP that I'd assume would have such an agreement.

reply to fartness
What browser are you using?

IE, FF, and Chrome all does the same thing.

reply to fartness
»productforums.google.com/forum/#···vxvdrF9w

I use SmartVideo for Firefox, works great...