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YouTube slow over wifi but not 3g?

D

Dermot81

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 10, 2007
96
0
Anyone else experiencing this problem?

YouTube works fine over 3g, albeit at a lesser bitrate, but keeps freezing up over wifi. My speedtest results over wifi are solid and all other wifi functions (browsing, mail, app downloads) work fine.

I guess if no one else is having this issue must be a problem on my end?

Edit: it was only recently that I started having this problem. YouTube used to work flawlessly over wifi. Might have been the firmware update ?
 
I find YouTube very very slow on WiFi on the iPhone.

I'm on a 10MB connection - on my Mac YouTube loads videos almost instantly, and are ready to watch instantly. On my iPhone, for a 30 second clip, I end up having to wait about 20 seconds.
 
jav6454 said:
Wi-Fi is connection dependent. Sometimes your 3G will outperform your Wi-Fi if you have slow speeds, so that may be your issue.
Click to expand...

He's right. Basically he's saying you have a stronger connection via cellular network as opposed to wifi.
 
Kilamite said:
I find YouTube very very slow on WiFi on the iPhone.

I'm on a 10MB connection - on my Mac YouTube loads videos almost instantly, and are ready to watch instantly. On my iPhone, for a 30 second clip, I end up having to wait about 20 seconds.
Click to expand...

Really? That's extremely strange and I'm inclined to think that is a hardware defect with your iPhone. In certain public places I find WiFi to be slower than 3G, but that is rare and especially at home - I almost never wait a single second on my home RoadRunner connection (cable). I have an AirPort Extreme and Express running at only G, unfortunately for my iPhone, but get extremely good performance from that. Possibly your wireless router is the problem? @OP jav6454 has got it exactly right...
 
Auzburner said:
Really? That's extremely strange and I'm inclined to think that is a hardware defect with your iPhone. In certain public places I find WiFi to be slower than 3G, but that is rare and especially at home - I almost never wait a single second on my home RoadRunner connection (cable). I have an AirPort Extreme and Express running at only G, unfortunately for my iPhone, but get extremely good performance from that. Possibly your wireless router is the problem? @OP jav6454 has got it exactly right...
Click to expand...

It is just YouTube that is slow - Safari is fine and loads quickly. I have an Airport Extreme N running a G network.

It varies on the video - but generally it isn't as quick as it is on my Mac.
 
Same problem here everything works fine but when watching youtube videos over my 24mbps connection on wifi it is slow. If I watch them on my computer there is no problem.
 
Same problem here x4

Smae problem for me, and two of my friends with wifi. I have an airport extreme and express running 6mbps connection on g/n and everything but YouTube loads reall fast. I find myself switching to 3g in order to watch a video. My friend has the same setup with a 10mbs connection and his phone has the same issue. 3g YouTube videos are less quality but faster load.
 
jav6454 said:
Wi-Fi is connection dependent. Sometimes your 3G will outperform your Wi-Fi if you have slow speeds, so that may be your issue.
Click to expand...

Nah, I've definitely noticed that my i4 loads Youtube videos slower than my last iPhone did on ALL wifi networks.

Does the i4 perhaps download a higher-quality version from Youtube than the old phones did? I don't have my old one to test side by side anymore. Or maybe it IS just a bug. It seems to drop the buffered part at the drop of a hat as well. Something just doesn't feel right.

So I dunno why, but I do know that I noiced this myself before this thread was made. And all the "what's your ISP?" questions aren't going to help. This is happening on many different networks on many different ISPs.
 
Honestly, I don't think this is just with the iPhone.

YouTube does run fairly slow on the iPhone, yet it also runs slow on my brand new laptop that is connected via wifi.

Seems a bit odd but maybe it's just a slow internet connection.

My ISP is Verizon.
 
What ever going on is crazy. I'm having the same problem except it seems like it just stops loading or doesn't load. I even called apple but the tech said he's never heard of the problem and basically dismissed me by saying he would turn it in and if it's a big enough problem it will get looked into.

I've been sticking to one video as a 'control' and it did work this morning (7-7-10) but not yesterday or the rest of today. It loads up and starts playing instantly on the laptop which is on the same wireless network. I'm trying to view it right now on the phone and I don't think a 3:34 second video should take 15 minutes to only get 36 seconds of it loaded. Especially when it starts playing within a second on the laptop.

Maybe we should all be trying to play the same video and compare results. Here is the one I've been trying...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkcLLI6Yv8I

I'd be happy to try a different one also if someone has a suggestion.

But more important, I would rather try a solution if anybody has one.
 
Small White Car said:
Nah, I've definitely noticed that my i4 loads Youtube videos slower than my last iPhone did on ALL wifi networks.

Does the i4 perhaps download a higher-quality version from Youtube than the old phones did? I don't have my old one to test side by side anymore. Or maybe it IS just a bug. It seems to drop the buffered part at the drop of a hat as well. Something just doesn't feel right.

So I dunno why, but I do know that I noiced this myself before this thread was made. And all the "what's your ISP?" questions aren't going to help. This is happening on many different networks on many different ISPs.
Click to expand...

Oh this is not about the iPhone 4. Check the original post date. This thread is from way back January 2009. This thread is OLD.
 
jav6454 said:
Oh this is not about the iPhone 4. Check the original post date. This thread is from way back January 2009. This thread is OLD.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter how old the original thread is, it still plagues the new iP4. Mine does the same thing and it is aggravating, to say the least.
 
patdesignsinc said:
Doesn't matter how old the original thread is, it still plagues the new iP4. Mine does the same thing and it is aggravating, to say the least.
Click to expand...

We are not talking about the iPhone 4!!!!! This was a thread about how the iPhone 3G had faster 3G connection than Wi-Fi because the OP had a slower Internet connection thru is Wi-Fi! In other words he paid little $ to his ISP and got a 1Mb/s connection which is no match for a 3G 3.6Mb/s connection back then.
 
hello.
this problem still happens to the iphone 4 and i belive its got to do with the youtube app playing the video on the highest def when wifi/iphone can not handle the high definition.
maybe the utube app needs updating.
 
there is no problem... Here is what's happening:
The iPhone youtube app on 3G runs videos on a 10MB max load (meaning that youtube reduces the quality to crap and the size to 10MB[if not mistaken] on a 3G connection)-unless you jb the app always will stream the video to 10MB for it to reduce bandwidth consumption and faster loading...

The iPhone youtube app on WIFI uses the full resolution and size of the video uploaded, so if the video was 'HD' it would take way more time since the size is way more than the limit of 10MB of a 3G connection.

The other thing is that maybe you have really slow wifi, a good 3G signal can give you around 1.5-2GB download speed (the app would still only download 10MB max quality video) and if the wifi you are using is less then it would take way more time since it would be loading the video in full resolution with a slower internet speed.

Is the speed of your native youtube app on 3G different than going through safari and looking at the mobile version of youtube?
 
You Tubes runs slow for me too on wifi. But i found that it's only using the app. If i use safari, it loads fine. So I just created a link on my home screen and use that instead of the app.
 
wow I'm so happy to see a thread on this. It has been driving me crazy! Youtube is unusable on wifi.

I'm on Time Warner
 
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