YouTube speed issues
I’ve been noticing recently that YouTube is suffering some significant speed issues. It used to be that speed was no problem, and the video would be entirely downloaded faster than one-quarter of the way through playback. Now, YouTube can’t even seem to transmit the videos in real time, meaning the video will frequently stop and stutter. It’s like RealPlayer’s “Buffering … buffering …” all over again. To watch a video without these annoying interruptions now I have to pause the video and let it load most of the way (meanwhile I’m browsing something else in another tab). Finally, when the download is mostly done, I unpause it, and hopefully the download finishes by the time playback reaches the end of the video.
What’s going on with YouTube? I know they’re growing exponentially, and they still don’t have a revenue model. Still, they were bought by Google, and you’d think that gives them enough money to buy infrastructure with. But it looks like their traffic has severely surpassed their infrastructure. They simply don’t have enough servers and/or bandwidth to handle everything coming at them, and as a result, the service is really suffering. I’ve mostly lost interest in YouTube now because I cannot just sequentially watch as many videos as I want. It’s a chore now; I have to identify stuff I want to watch, open them in new tabs, and wait awhile for them to load. Sorry, I’m not going to bother.
January 16th, 2007 at 16:35
Same problem here, i’m now exploring others similar websites, they are all faster, but number of video is way beyound youtube. I really like Stage6 from divx, instant HDTV 1080p download. But you must have a no-downlad limit isp, each minutes is about 80mb…
January 16th, 2007 at 17:34
I’m glad to hear that it’s not just me having this problem. I’m sure YouTube is aware of it … are they really doing anything about it though?
January 30th, 2007 at 11:48
I thought it was just my Internet, I was watching the videos and suddenly I started noticing the decrease in speed, I think it’s to do with peak time.
January 30th, 2007 at 15:55
I should note that, since I moved back to Comcast Cable over Verizon FIOS, I haven’t experienced the same kinds of slowdown again.
September 29th, 2007 at 23:14
I was using youtube today in the morning and the downloading was very fast (as before) but about 12:00 am the downloading was very crappy so i think it has to be sth with the peak time.
October 26th, 2007 at 17:03
YouTube is seriously slow. Its either not buffering the movie or the movie aint loading at all (movie not loaded). Everytime I go to YT it says waiting for youtube.com all the time in IE. Currently its un-usable.
December 7th, 2007 at 23:17
Why don’t you guys change to Cable or DSL. I don’t have any problem with those connections.
December 7th, 2007 at 23:52
MC, we already have broadband. Trust me, we’re not on dial-up or anything.
December 26th, 2007 at 14:53
Have broadband (cable). Great connection, great p2p speeds, but UTube has been clogged in the Intertubes for me lately as well - as has CNN. Probably our wonderful Homeland inSecurity clogging things up by tapping all the traffic.
February 3rd, 2008 at 08:46
I am using two PCs, on one YT is fine and on the other its very slow. I dont know why ?
February 14th, 2008 at 14:29
i am also having this speed issue on youtube,i am currently trying on stage 6, i have created a channel and i am trying to upload sum music videos too but it will take time to update to the latest
April 8th, 2008 at 09:09
This is worst even now- April 2008 I can’t even watch youtube at all anymore.It’s stuck right from the beginning and dosn’t even attewmpt to buffer at all…….I changed to dailymotion along with my friends and its fine!
November 2nd, 2008 at 00:54
I have the same problem at my house and my internet top speed is 6000KB/s but at my friends place the problem dose not occur and his internet top speed is 700KB/s
November 20th, 2008 at 09:18
oh now I’m relieved that I am not the only one who is suffering from this I do now own a 6000KBps connection but have a 5Mbps connection which certainly is more then sufficient to load and play videos without pausing.. but youtube always had this problem.. lol