How Fast Does YouTube Say Your Internet Speed Is?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.youtube.com/my_speed#' target='_blank'>http://www.youtube.com/my_speed#</a><br /><br /></div><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//dht/auto/1273518493.usr1.png" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>I'm not entirely sure how I ended up finding <a href="http://www.youtube.com/my_speed" target="_blank">this page on YouTube's site</a>, but I'm always interested in seeing real-world bandwidth tests, and YouTube probably burns up more bandwidth than any other domain on the planet, so they have some rich data from which to draw upon. Make sure you're logged into YouTube, then check out their <a href="http://www.youtube.com/my_speed" target="_blank">historical speed page</a>. The above screenshot shows that I consume YouTube videos at 11.98Mbps average speed; I was surprised to see that the average Canadian rating, and the global rating, were so low. <MORE /></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//dht/auto/1273518569.usr1.png" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>The speed comparison over time was quite interesting - look at how the measurement spikes then drops downward severely. Quite curious. How does your YouTube historical access speed rate?</p><p>And if you're interested in some real-time data, YouTube has a test video at the bottom of their speed page that will show you real-time streaming information. Pretty cool!</p>

[ptyork]

Yeah, I have about the same speed as you, now (woohoo!!!). But I find it funny that YouTube actually shows this. YouTube throttles the crap out of its streams in general. I can be watching a 100Kbs stream and still have it barely keep up and overrun the buffer on occasion. Same for 1000Kbs. Doesn't matter.

They seem to limit their bandwidth usage by limiting how big the buffer can get. Thus, they don't "waste" the bits if someone stops watching halfway through. I understand the logic. But the implementation is horrible. it makes it VERY frustrating because I almost always get some interruptions during a decently long (> 30seconds) YouTube stream. No other site. Just YouTube. Same at work.

Anyone else notice this behavior?

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

It's different for me. Some videos load extremely fast (ADSL2+ user here at 10Mbps), while some reminds me of 56k days...

I suspect that maybe the slow videos are from another server that's being a bit congested at the moment.

[Jason Dunn]

YouTube throttles the crap out of its streams in general. I can be watching a 100Kbs stream and still have it barely keep up and overrun the buffer on occasion. Same for 1000Kbs. Doesn't matter.

Yeah, I see lots of performance issues with YouTube in general - some days videos come fast and fluid, other days they sputter and stutter and sometimes won't even load. There's never really been a bandwidth destroying site like YouTube in the history of the Web, so I think they do the best they can but have some bad days when things go wrong...