If your YouTube is slow, but your internet is fast, then you’re suffering from issues largely out of your control. The good news is that your issues are temporary. The bad news is that temporary is both flexible and relative.
Hi, I’m Aaron. I love technology–so much that I’ve pursued a career in it. I am also a frequent YouTube consumer and infrequent creator. Internet issues can be the bane of my creative existence.
Let’s analyze why YouTube may not perform well when your internet is.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- An Internet Speed Test should be your primary analysis.
- If that’s inconclusive, you may have a DNS issue and you should address that.
- Alternatively, it may be an Alphabet issue. If that’s the case, then you need to wait out the issues.
YouTube Performance Analysis
When you have YouTube performance issues, but you’ve presumably bought an expensive and fast internet plan, you should be concerned. There are a few steps you can take to figure out your problem.
Internet Speed Test
Test your internet speed. Your Internet Service Provider (or ISP) may offer a speed you can never attain. In fact, that’s par for the course. If you purchased a 100 MBPS connection or a 1 GBPS connection, that means that you’ve purchased a specific speed in optimal conditions you’ll never achieve.
Run an internet speed test either through speedtest.net or fast.com. If you have internet provided by Comcast/Xfinity, they own speedtest, so use fast.com owned by Netflix. The results will definitely be under the download speed you purchased.
If the deviation is more than 20%, your Internet Service Provider is throttling your service. That may happen because you’re downloading too much data, you’re engaging in illegal file sharing without a VPN, or another reason. Calling your ISP may reveal the issue.
If that isn’t the issue…
You May Have a DNS Issue
If you don’t know what a DNS issue is, then this explanation may not be helpful to you. DNS stands for Domain Name Service. It’s effectively a Yellow Pages for your YouTube use. There are many Yellow Pages, and the one you’re using doesn’t have YouTube’s number.
You can change your DNS servers via your internet router/modem interface. Most ISPs allow you to configure this setting through your provided modem or router. 0.0.0.0 is the DNS server for OpenDNS. 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 is the DNS server for Google.
Mixing and matching DNS servers is generally a good practice for uptime since you can typically specify a primary and secondary DNS server. Using two sources is ideal. You can search on the internet for alternatives.
Alternatively, it may be…
An Alphabet Issue
If you addressed a DNS and ISP issue, then the issue is likely Alphabet’s. Alphabet, formerly Google, is one of the internet goliaths.
That doesn’t mean it’s immune to cyberattack or compromise. If you have issues accessing Alphabet services, then it may be facing a DDOS attack or other service compromise. It’s unlikely your personal data is affected–-definitely wait for an impact statement from Alphabet–but it’s more likely you see a service impact.
FAQs
Here are some answers to commonly asked questions about YouTube slowness.
Why My YouTube is Slow Even with Fast Internet?
You have DNS, internet, or Alphabet issues. In all situations, you need to wait a few hours for a fix. If that’s not forthcoming, press support for an alternative.
Why is My Internet Only Fast on YouTube?
DNS and Content Delivery Network Services (CDN) are impacted by overload. You can fix DNS, but you can’t fix CDN services unless you subscribe to VPN services.
Does Clearing YouTube Cache Delete Downloads?
Some of them. It depends on how YouTube is configured on your device. Largely, this will not work.
Conclusion
If your YouTube is running slow, but your internet is running quickly, then there’s some blockage between you and your ISP and Alphabet’s service offering. Absent control of the ISP and Alphabet connection, management is collaborative.
Have you addressed YouTube running slowly? What was your solution?