For the past two or so months, I've noticed that videos on YouTube were unable to stream at anything above 240p, which is the minimum quality option available. Any higher and I face extensive buffering. The thing is, my connection is clocked at 6Mbps down and .5Mbps up, which is more than enough to play 480p and 720p quality videos. I thought perhaps this was a problem with my NIC, so I tried it on several different computers at my house and they all experience the buffering issues.
Here's what I gathered thus far:
- The slow transfer rate only occurs when streaming video on YouTube.com. Other video sites work fine.
- This problem is reproducible on multiple computers.
- Multiple measures of my internet connection (via Speedtest) and my router's status show that I have a good connection at 6Mbps with a good signal to noise ratio on the DSL line. With a latency of about 10-20ms from the nearest server here in Dallas.
- And perhaps this is the most perplexing part: using a VPN connection resolves the issue.
Could it be possible that my ISP (AT&T DSL) is somehow throttling access to YouTube?
Open any YouTube Video > Right-Click on said video > Click "Take Speed Test"
and report on your speed results straight from YouTube?