Improve YouTube Buffering
By Anand Khanse for The Windows Club
Not many online experiences more frustrating than waiting for a YouTube video to buffer. The folks at The Windows Club offer a few possible solutions.–PC Pitstop.
There are a lot of video streaming websites out there, and YouTube is without a doubt the most used video website on this planet. But recently I started having issues with YouTube buffering. I have a pretty decent connection, but still the YouTube videos will take forever to buffer – and this can be really frustrating when you are trying to watch something really important. Except YouTube all the other streaming sites worked just fine – for example Metacafe, Vimeo, etc. So I decided to do some troubleshooting to see if I could resolve this problem and improve YouTube buffering, performance and speed.
Improve YouTube Buffering, Performance, Speed
I found that like myself, there were thousands of people having this issue even with fast internet connections, and were looking for ways to improve YouTube Buffering and Speed. So I started researching on possible ways to speed up the buffering speed of YouTube. I found a few fixes that improved the buffering speed to an extent where it’s acceptable. The fixes I found is from various websites which some claim it works, and some claim otherwise so it’s more like a hit and miss.
Firewall Exceptions Trick:
I came across this website mitchribar.com where he has found out that certain ISP tends to throttle bandwidth from the server that caches videos which caused performance issues. So he found the relevant IP range and managed to block them with Windows Firewall, and in return improve the performance because then it doesn’t cache – but directly streams the video from the YouTube server. Personally I didn’t notice any difference, but seems like it helped a lot of users.
This is how you can do it:
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”TWCYouTubeFIX” dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes
Now reboot the system and try to access YouTube and see if it works better. Remember it might take a little more time than usual to start the video because of IP blocking. But once it starts it might be faster. If you want to remove this rule, just type the following and hit Enter:
netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=”TWCYouTubeFIX”
Shared with permission from The Windows Club.
388 total views, 1 views today
The description of what blocking 173.194.55.0/24 does is the wrong way around.
That block is used on Google’s 1st tier Youtube servers. If you block that, you instead force Youtube to use the distributed cache servers that many ISPs deploy in their networks.
So, please refrain from calling it ‘Throttling’, implying that the ISP is the cause of the problem. In many cases, it is Youtube who is incorrectly directing users to the wrong servers.
i installed latest adobe flash player…then went to youtube….the started a video…then right clicked and went to setting…then i set unlimited in storage…and presto no more buffering issues at all
That's it?
Thanks for the info, I'm new at this. Haven't tried anything yet. Thanks again!!!!
What about improving buffering on mobile android devices? Any Advice?
make sure you have good internet security all this websites are not for real, nothing is for free ( usually ) and it also can make your computer unstable, some times is better to wait 30 seconds or alittle more than to get a virus, and 99 % of the time is not u tube is the computer is either old or needs more ram, take care good luck.
I don't know, usually is your computer, give it more ram, I won't try it because usually this people put a viruses on your computer and could also make windows unstable
Totally screw up my YouTube. Constantly freezes and the removal command did not help.
Win7 Ult on Gigabyte board and AMD+
This is really good stuff. Thanks!!!!
What a load of poppycock
Do one better. go to GRC.com and download the DNS benchmark app. The reason Utube buffers is beucase your DNS servers are not fast enough. The DNS benchmark will show you what servers are fast. You then change your DNS server properties in TPC/IPv4. If you have a cheap router and are using it as a DNS server, you will buffer
Want faster internet downloads? Here is a good article on speeding up You Tube. I subscribe to this Tech Newsletter, tons of helpful hints for better computer living every week.