Broadband forum: Video streaming problems: Who's to blame, ISP or computer?

Sometimes it can be websites that aren't giving enough bandwidth to the end consumer, but as this person states they are having problems with Youtube aka Google Video (and numerous other sites) I hardly think Google is struggling with bandwidth - or else the internet is doomed!

To determine if your Internet connection is good enough for Streaming video go to http://pingtest.net

This will measure packet loss, ping times and jitter.

I had that a lot when I first got Netflix. I was using a WII system and that seemed to be ok. Turned out after calling my provider (DSL-Qwest) they tested my setup and their speed was only half of what it should have been. They did some magic on their end and the speed increased to where it was supposed to be...no more problems, although I still do have some website buffering going on. With that I find that if I let the video start, and then pause it, wait for 20 seconds or so to let it buffer ahead, then press play it will usually finish without another stall.
Good luck.

Since you state that videos...even 30 second videos take up to 5 minutes buffering and stuttering to play through...I presume you ARE playing the videos in your Browser window NOT through Windows Media Player or another software player like apple quicktime or Real Player or VLC Media player These video players reside locally on your harddrive and you download the content and play it back through a local account ON YOUR MACHINE...if it's one of these local media players playing back content you already downloaded... it could be a software or hardware issue but you stated you were watching videos ONLINE...making me believe it's your connection having the issue.

IF you're playing the videos in your browsers session...ie...Internet Explorer, FireFox...or Chrome or another browser...it's going to be a bandwidth issue or a problem with your network interface card (NIC) and yes there are ways to check your speeds.

First go to www.speedtest.net and check your speeds for BOTH download AND upload...the tests they run show both...try several different servers to test by choosing to test one...let the tests run...then when finished...write down your speeds and then choose another server to test...the app lets you test as many times as you want.

This way you get a cross section of fast to slow connections across the country or globe! This will tell you IF your ISP's available bandwidth is what bandwidth you are supposed to be getting and what you ARE paying for!

For instance let's say you pay for 20 Mbps...this is the package you pay your ISP for and by using the tests from speedtest.net...you can see your download speeds and compare what YOU ARE ACTUALLY getting as compared to what you are paying for...that's why you test numerous times to see your average. I pay charter for (30 Mbps) and often times I see up to (66 Mbps)...average across numerous locations I use for testing at www.speedtest.net.
Bandwidth availability across the internet is heavily dependent on the time of day I'm testing...(obviously late night is much faster than the middle of the day) mid afternoon is usually the slowest for me...when everybodies at work using the internet...but late night when most folks are asleep...I can blaze it across the internet...so yes time of use does matter!

One thing I want to throw in here as well could be....line level noise...static or intereference in the transmission lines for your connection...ie...bad phone lines, bad cable lines...a dslam not working correctly..that's a teleco issue...there's numerous reasons why your connection "COULD" be so slow...they ALL have to be investigated...but in todays' modern era of broadband...this shouldn't be your issue...I presume you have either DSL or CABLE for your broadband connection...if it's DSL...the phone lines and the DSLAM could be your issue...if it's cable...it's going to be your cable providers broadband side that has to be investigated...IF IT ISN'T THE VIDEO SITE SERVER HAVING ISSUES...you need to use www.speedtest.net and then you have an idea of where to jump!

I would hesistate to state absolutely that the ISP isn't providing the appropriate amount of bandwidth until I ran those tests and I looked at what your SLA or service level agreement is with your ISP provider. The reason I say this is because a fair amount of the time...the bandwidth choke point isn't necessarily with the ISP...the servers HOSTING the videos you want to see may be overloaded for requests and are running very slowly...but the only way to tell is to verify your available speeds and comparing them to what your ISP is supposed to provide to you.

IMPORTANT:

This area is extremely gray when it comes to SLA's...a lot of the time...all the ISP is actually responsible for is a "active" connection and bandwidth "AS AVAILABLE" meaning they do NOT GUARANTEE the entire bandwidth being available...just a live connection is guarantee!

So test your connection...then open a service ticket with your isp if what you are able to get is (a lot less) than what you are paying for ...it has to be a lot less(this is dial-up speeds) if you can't even run a 30 sec video without five minutes of buffering.

Good luck and keep us in the loop..we techies are seriously interested in SLA's and actual speeds as well as how the ISP's respond to these types of service issues...you could even be helping by illuminating an issue they weren't aware of OR they could treat you very badly....the only way to find out is to test..test...test...then call and begin the process or reporting an issue with your ISP.

Respectfully,
Bobby Ketcham

As a school teacher, I often do video streaming. There are times when I notice a slowdown in streaming performance. I have found that the streaming is usually slow during the peak hours of internet usage or if a lot of people at the school are using the internet connection at the same time. Unfortunately, unless you subscribe for a faster connection, there is not much you can do about it unless you download web content to your hard drive first before you view it.

I sometimes download YouTube videos before viewing them offline. To download, I usually use a Firefox web browser plugin called Flash Got. It will allow you to download Flash videos to your hard drive very easily. To view the Flash videos offline, you will need a media player that is compatible with Flash videos. I would recommend using VLC Player. You can get that program from the internet free of charge.

Viewing Flash videos offline has its advantages. It allows you to view the videos without the interrupted playback. It also helps you avoid data charges on your phone or tablet. If you travel,you can view videos while riding in a train, bus, or plane.

I hope these suggestions help.

If you contact the site that is doing the streaming, ask them for the optimal requirements you need to view the streaming video.

Then check your hardware for compliance.

Next, ensure that you do not have junk programs running like messengers, reminders, etc, at the same time or extra tabs open.

Check for malware/spyware/etc and get rid of any.

Be sure you have the latest flash update and any other updates/drivers you might need.

Check to see if your hard drive is more than 50% full, and be sure it is properly defragmented (not needed for SSD drives).

Avoid using Norton or McAfee - those have been known to slow systems down to a crawl.

If necessary turn off any antivirus program you are running.

If after you make sure everything is OK, contact your ISP. If you are on a shared internet like Cable, the node you share could be overloaded. When they say speed of whatever gigabits or megabits you expect to get at least 80% of that as a bare minimum, NO LESS. Tell them no speed = no pay the bill.

Your modem could be old or your connection throttled.

Warner Cable has a BUNCH of bad servers in the NYC area. Some are even infected with bogus sites spoofing people. Usually paypal spoofs.

Try using a run from CD version of Linux (most are free). It doesn't make any changes to your computer unless you make it do it. PCLinuxOS is similar to Windows. Linux Mint is a bit bloated, but works OK. Puppy Linux runs entirely in your RAM. That is among the fastest versions of an OS out there. And if that is fast, then everything else should be fast too.

See if that improves the issue. If not, then it is either hardware related or ISP related.

Note: be sure your CPU heat sink, video card heat sink, and power supply aren't full of dust and dirt.
Heat can cause problems too.

You could try using a different browser. Firefox, google, or even opera. See if any of that shows improvement.

Just read first 11 post.
You have purchased from your ISP a certain transfer rate.
Here is what affects that data rate. (Some have already mentioned what I will mention again).
Number of devises going through your portal at same time.
Number of tool bars on your computer it has to go through.
number of ISP subscribers useing the same server as you are.
Amount of available vedio memory on your computer.
Remember your smart phone is a computer.

How do I go to the control Panel in the video card?I'm using a Dell 4700 computer running the XP Pro operting system.

The problem can be anything that runs the video. The list is:

Broadband connection 1) Speed, 2) response time.

The computer itself, speed, and memory.

The video card and codex.

So troubleshooting to isolate the problem.

First go to www.speedtest.net. Look at the bandwidth and the "ping" time. If the bandwidth is lower than 3 MB or the ping time is above 50ms, you may want to look at talking with the broadband provider to see what it will take to raise the speed and decrease the ping time.

If this those are OK, then download a video. (so it is local) Then play it in your media player. See if it performs well there. If that is OK, it is likely your computer and video card are adequate. Then I would try other video providers to see if I get different results .

If it is not OK when you run the video locally, then start looking at what resources are being maxed out using the task manager while running the video. That would point you to what the most likely cause.

Hope this helps.

Rich

I can play videos when I log into Internet explore but canno play videos on Firefox. Anyone know why?

These ports appear to be blocked and my ISP swears it is not them. I have turned off my anti-virus, firewall and deleted any programs that I did not need. But I still have the same problem. Netflix won't stream, Itunes won't update my devices or restore, and Webex does not work. They all use these ports. Any ideas?

BUT, you haven't mentioned any info about what your computer is like, or who's/what level of service you are using.

My preference would be to test it all!

See pcpitstop.com to test both as a unit, but get individual answers.

L-8-R-B.

On Youtube or any of the others if you are getting a buffering message then the problem is with your computers connection to the internet.

Now this may be due to the speed of your ISP, or a problem with your router.

Without knowing more about your ISP and network configuration it would be hard to put the finger on who is to blame.

If you live in a rural area and are still using a copper wire connection instead of either fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) or fibre to the home (FTTH) the problem is most certainly going to be your ISP just can't give you anywhere near enough speed. I live in a rural area and face the same problem and at times it's a pain in the backside because even trying to listen to music on Grooveshark can be troublesome.

Do you know what speed your ISP claims to give you - some ISP's will say we will give you "upto 20mbps" but if you ask them properly they will then say well the maximum your line can support is 2mbps. If your in the UK Ofcom have tried to stop this by forcing companies to tell people exactly what speed they are likely to achieve before signing a contract. Remember if they say "upto" then that is not the real speed, and if you ask them to do a line check they should be able to tell you the real speed you can acheive.

Now if your getting buffering issues I'm going to assume that you are either on ADSL (copper wire broadband), or there is an issue with your router.

If your on ADSL there are a few more things that can slow your internet down and that can be controlled by you.

At some point your router or modem goes into the phone socket. Do you know which phone socket it goes into. If you have more than one phone socket in your house try and ensure that your router or modem is plugged into the master socket. This is the one that is connected directly to the outside, and not an extension as extension cable is nowhere near as good as the copper wire outside and can severely affect speeds.

In addition to this ensure that you have a filter on the socket, and also place a filter on every other phone socket in your house. An ADSL filter is a little white box, with two sockets one labelled DSL and the other labelled Phone (or symbols to indicate the two). The way ADSL broadband works is that it sends the internet signal on a high frequency, this reduces the amount of frequency available for talking on the phone, but on a phone system your hardly going to be using it for sending down high quality audio so as long as you can hear the person at the other end the slight loss of quality really doesn't matter, plus the frequency that is used is usually higher than what some people can hear anyway. Now the filter is just a simple low-pass audio filter. It removes any high frequency sounds that may interfere with the internet connection. It also removes the high frequency internet noise from your conversation as well, which is why if your filter isn't working properly, or you forgot to install one you can sometimes hear high pitched noises over the top of your conversations on the phone, what you are hearing is the internet and as annoying as it is for you it is worse for the computer, because you know you can ignore those tones, where as the computer can't determine what is tone and what is speech. Not putting filters in will severely reduce your internet speed, and ensure you put a filter in on every phone, because normally on extensions if they're wired inside the master socket they'll be wired so that they're after the filter which is why an additional filter is required.

Ok so we've done that - router/modem plugged into master socket, and filters fitted to all phone sockets.

Now what else could be causing slow internet...

Internet sharing - This is one that is getting more and more of a problem with the increase in devices that use the internet. You have both internal and external sharing. External sharing there is very little you can do anything about, unless you look for an ISP with a low contention ratio e.g. a contention ratio of 50:1 means 50 people are all connected to that original connection so that speed has to be dished out to 49 other homes as well as yours, where as a contention ratio of 20:1 means only 20 people are sharing your connection (nb. if your speed is 2mbps and your on a 20:1 line you'll probably find that the start of the line has a speed of about 20mbps based on the fact that they assume about half the people wont be using the internet all at the same time except at peak times when you may notice the internet slow down to 1mbps). Of course other than choosing an ISP with a low contention ratio or moving house to a place with very few properties there is little you can do about the external sharing.

On top of that you have internal sharing, remember that at the box on the wall the internet may come in at say for example 6mbps, but then it again is split between numerous devices, you may have a PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Laptop, Tablet, Smartphone all connected and each of these are going to try and grab a bit of that 6mbps which means that if shared equally each device is left with only 1mbps to play with, of course it doesn't exactly work like that, each device can be given different amounts of internet speed depending on how much it's demanding that speed. so one PC that has a torrent program running might be taking 4mbps leaving just 2mbps to be shared between the other 5 devices.

Then as well as all the above if your on a wireless network this can also slow the connection down. Depending on whether your using 802.11B, G or N. 802.11N will give you the best speed and best connection between your router and your PC apart from changing to Ethernet cabling. But all radio frequencies can have various amounts of interference due to other devices producing EMF (electro-magnetic fields). An EMF is an invisible magnetic field that surrounds all electrical devices, and this can interfere with other devices. Sometimes you may be able to pinpoint the exact thing that is causing you problems but quite often it can be either a number of things all combined, or totally unexplainable. I know in our house we have a immersion heater due to not being on gas, and at night when that turns on it can severely weaken the internet signal, but also we sometimes get some radio interference from the radar station that is on the hill near us. So that can also affect your speeds and cause buffering

Then finally it can be down to what you have running in the background of your PC whilst trying to watch the video. If you have something like uTorrent running in the background downloading loads of files, whilst trying to watch a video, or if your PC has a virus, adware or spyware, all these can be borrowing your bandwidth and slowing your internet down and causing video buffering.

So there are a few checks to find out if the fault is internally.

Firstly quit all the extra programs that you have running - ensuring they do quit and don't just sit in the taskbar near the clock - right click on any that do that in the task bar and select quit from there, or an even better way is to download a linux live CD like puppy linux (http://www.puppylinux.org) boot from that and see if the buffering happens with that (bear in mind that you'll need it to connect to the network, and possibly install flash to play a video). If it does then you know the problem isn't with any programs you have running.

Next thing to try is to turn off all other devices where possible that are also connected to your internet - this includes smartphones, smart-tvs, games consoles, blu-ray players, etc. and see if that makes a difference. If it does then you have too many devices on your internet.

And finally if possible move your PC to the router and connect directly with ethernet to the router. If you still get buffering at this stage, then the problem is most likely to be on your ISP's side and other than change your ISP to a better one there is very little you can do about that.

One other thing I forgot to mention above is to try and reduce the video quality.

sometimes Youtube will assume your internet connection can handle 720p resolution, if you click the cog on the bottom it brings up a list of resolutions, try 240p or 320p, the video may not look as good, but it shouldn't buffer as much, plus pause the video for a few minutes before starting to play it to give it chance to buffer a bit, you can see the buffer location in the bottom it's the bit where the play bar has gone from black to grey.

Note: This post was edited by its original author to merge two posts into one. on 08/31/2012 at 11:08 AM PT