Youtube Loading Slow – It’s Time to Speed Up!
September 27th, 2009
Youtube has been really slow for last few weeks, some people say months. After all it takes ages lately before you can run a video, all you see is endless loading and slow buffering. Let’s presume you don’t have a dial-up connection, if so it’s very advisable not to run videos in high quality (HQ) or high definition (HD).
If you have ADSL connection or higher, follow these steps to make Youtube loading fast again. We are going to change DNS servers you got from your ISP.
This particularly method to speed up Youtube is shown for Windows Vista, but should look quite similar on XP, or even with Windows 7.
- Go Windows Start button, and run Control Panel.
- Click on Network and Sharing Center.
- Select Manage network connections.
- Double click on active internet connection, probably named as Local Area Connection.
- Click Properties.
- Now double click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), located in middle form.
- Select Use the following DNS server addressed, and change them to:
- Click OK to confirm changes to Open DNS servers.
Preferred DNS Server: 208.67.222.222 Alternate DNS Server: 208.67.222.222
Great. Youtube videos should be loading fast again.
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when I thought it was my bad connection… I am really glad I’ve found this fix .. now, Youtube is loading fast again!!!
cool it’s loading normal again
lol this actually seems to work… youtube was driving me crazy with that shitty slow loading…
after all does Google care where are located or why are dns servers important to them?
I wish I would have seen this solution sooner as I spent hours trying to fix my internet connection and PC. Now I see problem was on Youtube end, which I find really weird. Could any tech guy explain how could loading be related to DNS?
Thank you guys!
Does this only happen to people from Europe? I’ve changed dns servers as mentioned in this article. I hope this will work out as permanent solution.
Better no Youtube, than slow Youtube.
This didnt exactly work that well but youtube is alittle faster
wooow.. it looked this worked for me… at least all videos I tried for now loaded faster than ever before
Mark
Guess what? Youtube is working super faster after changing dns servers as mentioned in guide…
I have also noticed that Youtube has been loading really slow lately. I am going to try this fix tonight and get back to you guys tomorrow. Hope it works :)
Its not working! or is it me? :)
thank you so much… it’s working!!! also some other sites seem to resolve faster after upgrading dns
what if I have wireless connection… how can I do this?
In this case you need to connect to your router and manually enter those IP’s as DNS1 and DNS2.
woooooow!!!! it’s working :DDDD
So great! I wouldn’t expect this to solve my Youtube slowness but it did!
Thank you guys!
Can this video buffering be also related to browser?
not that Youtube is slow.. it’s not even loading for me today
I just wanted to mention that the function of the DNS server is to merely translate the website name that is recognizable to humans – like google.com – to it’s IP address 74.125.65.103.
Therefore, changing the DNS server will have no affect on overall download speed.
A DNS server translates a domain name to an IP address. It does this only once, after that the client will know what the IP address is.
This advice does not make sense at all. You won’t experience a better sound quality phoning a friend after you’ve looked up the phone number in a different phone book than the one you’re used to. It’s the same thing.
@Ignor
I think you’ve missed a whole point here. It depends on what DNS server is used. Youtube uses many servers, located all over the US and Europe. So speed depends on which cache server you get connected which is related to DNS at very first place.
Changing DNS servers as mentioned in article can speed up Youtube buffering.
For the record, you can get better download speeds switching from/to HQ since the videos live on different servers. You may also copy the main URL that leads you to the video, close your browser and open the URL in a new session. Hitting F5 at the video page itself is not enough.
If you experience slowness in loading a video while the rest of the web loads fine then you’re probably connected to a Youtube server that happens to experience a temporary overload, suffers from a bad connection or node in between, or just another technical problem. Youtube has many, many servers all over the world. The server that is sending your particular video to you is chosen by a load balancing system and is determined by your location. It’s almost random. Starting a complete new session (this includes switching to/from HQ) might connect you to another server that works fine.
Furthermore, you might want to Google for ‘cable modem optimize’. Speedguide.net for instance has simple tweaks online that may improve your internet speed by allowing more simultaneous connections, better network connection cache, bigger packets etc.
@trustable
No. If your video is buffering it already has the connection and knows the IP address. Your video is not sent by multiple servers, at least not for you. Load balancing happens solely within the Youtube network where your DNS settings mean nothing.
@Ignor
Yes, in some way you are right about. Once (cache).youtube.com domain is resolved you may not notice an increasement.
But in this way we are not talking about loading Youtube site, but loading the video which is not hosted on same server data center.
And in this way changing DNS to Open DNS or any other free DNS server can do a trick!
I’ve ready many positive feedback around the web.
will it impact other sites? I use docq.com heavily and it is an intensive web 2.0 app and can’t afford it to be any slower.
thx.
i have noticed this issue for the last week. i tried everything i have read that i have found online. my download speed is 10megs and youtube is still F*in slow as hell. will play 2 seconds. then buffer for 5-10 seconds, play for another 2 seconds. i wait for it to load by pressing pause but it takes 10-15 min to load a short video. WTF
Thank you guys!
This fixed my issue with slow loading videos at Youtube. Now it’s buffering as it should.
S.A.
very interesting trick you have here. i’ll give it a try.
I’ve also posted a trick on how to accelerate youtube video speed in my site. I’ll add your trick to my list. thanks for sharing.
I couldn’t sleep while thinking that I messed up the speed of my computer! THANK YOU!!! IT WORKEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
@Joe
erroneous. You assume without sufficient justification that it doesn’t work. When in fact, it has for many people, including myself. therefore, stop with the typing. You’ll only hurt yourself.
NEVER change your DNS servers based on some guy like this one saying to, he can find out your passwords to some sites like prepay, google … etc by making a site that looks like the real one(general the login screen) then when you access this site he redirects you to his fake site, it’s very easy actually, and yes youtube may run faster, maybe he found out some servers that run better, put them in his DNS server, and voila it works better, it can’t be a fake… maybe i am just too paranoid, but at least now you know this type of attack