iPhone 3G + wifi + YouTube = Slow!

For what it's worth, I got an iPhone the other day and have been checking it out ever since. I was very disappointed with the YouTube over WiFi in the house. I have a NetGear router and went into the settings for it and changed the Wireless Settings Mode from g & b to Auto 108Mbps.

g & b - Both 802.11g and 802.11b wireless stations can be used.
g only - Only 802.11g wireless stations can be used.
Auto 108Mbps - All 802.11g, 802.11b and Netgear 108Mbps wireless stations can be used.
YouTube is now working a treat on my iPhone.

Hope this may be of some help.

Same here but it must be the firmware as my iPod touch is slow as he'll with YouTube as well

I can confirm this.. 🙂

as I can confirm most of the issues described in this thread.

Changing routers and all kind of settings didn't change much of the issue at all.

YouTube and Ustream remain unusable, please note that YouTube was working, albeit sluggish, previous to the latest 2.2 firmware update.

Strange enough, the joost.app seems to work still fine.

(watching the Iron Maiden world tour right now)

<Edited by Moderator>

Same problem here. Changes to Wifi g/a and or speed make no difference at all.

Only think we get when accessing Youtube video is "The movie could not be played."

We get the same error message in the youtube application and through the browser.

Kinda disappointing as we just picked up two new iPhones, and were already a bit concerned about leaving the better coverage of Verizon. Main reason for choosing iPhone was the WiFi. Now, if YouTube has trouble on the WiFi, I wonder what other apps may not work on WiFi?

Really surprised that there is no status whatsoever form apple on this!

Same here.

Very annoying problem!

FIX it, Apple!

I have had this problem since I had the 1st gen iPhone and Touch.

Still the same... dunno what the problem is. Safari & everything else lightning fast... youtube slower than a turtle.

The problem is, and always has been the iPhones inability to operate under a multi mode wifi situation. For anyone with a normal Router you just need to choose either B or G and your problem will be solved. This however will take away from the features that you most likely paid that little bit extra for when buying your router. So if you bought a Wireless N router, well you will have just lost that ability.

The other interest thing is that Apple's own Wifi device (and I speak from my own situation here) the Time Capsule will not even work correctly with the iPhone. Once again Multi mode is teh problem but things get a little worse here. The Time Capsule is unable to be put into either b or g only. We have 4 options presented to us:

- Wireless N (B & G Compatible)
- Wireless N Only
- Wireless A (B & G Compatible)
- Wireless A Only

iPhone is not an N device so Knock out the first two. The third Option is again a multi mode option so take that one out. Which leaves us with option. Wireless A Only. Works flawlessly with the iPhone, but how many devices do you have that can handle A... Yes most of the newer devices can, but things like Nintendo DS cant, old laptops cant etc etc..

It really isnt good enough from Apple.

In the meantime, I have set up an old b/g router than I have forced to B at home which I connect the iPhone to, while the rest of my network connects via Wireless N (b/g) at home.

annirowe wrote:
The Time Capsule is unable to be put into either b or g only. We have 4 options presented to us:

- Wireless N (B & G Compatible)
- Wireless N Only
- Wireless A (B & G Compatible)
- Wireless A Only

Hello annirowe,

this is actually one of the most common misconceptions about the Time-Capsule.

If you own one, try clicking on the popup menù while holding pressed the Alt-key: you will be prompted to your missing options, b" or "g" only, that is.

Although I certainly noticed some improvement, WiFi performance with YouTube remains a bit flakey.

/P

Gran Maestro

I officially and publicly stand corrected.. Thank you for releasing this little bit of info..

Why oh Why apple do you keep hiding this behind the option key.. I mean its kinda cool until you actually really need something and cant find it!

Thank you for showing me this. Wireless B here we come.

Hi annirowe,

I am glad you found this info helpful. Please be my guest.

As a matter of fact it isn't written in the enclosed manual, neither in the online one.
I just double checked this right now.

I think I kinda of stumbled across it while looking desperately for a solution to this and other network issues.

BTW, now that we ruled this one out, what are we going to try next? 🙂

Ok, "check it out dawg - it was a little pitchy."
I've noticed something here. My mom has an iPod Touch first generation and it only operates on Wi-Fi. Now, we have a d-link router, I think wireless n capable but the iPod works on the wireless g signal. I've changed the router to a wireless b signal only and it works! Yeah, maybe...
Here's how it works:
The iPod Touch is only a Wi-Fi capable device.
I have an iPhone 3G and am experiencing the YouTube slow issue. So changing the wireless signal to be only works to a point. I guess it's better than the ridiculously slow nature of the g... or is it? Well, the answer is yes, the YouTube videos do work much better over the wireless b signal, still the videos do not load like they have.
I've gotten great load times before... but it's sketchy at best. This 3G was loading videos over 3G better than Wi-Fi. The key word is was...
Notice that my mom's iPod tends to work better than mine, I mean I get full streaming YouTube videos on that iPod without any problems... EVER.
So what's the commonality? Wi-Fi... The iPod only has Wi-Fi, so wouldn't it be a shot in the dark if I could make it so the iPhone 3G only operates over Wi-Fi and has no phone signal... essentially making it an iPod Touch.
Do it... so I put the iPhone in Airplane Mode and enabled Wi-Fi.
BEHOLD, the iPhone 3G full of awesomeness in YouTube videos.
I even did a test right now to make sure I'm not crazy. I just tried "The Angry Video Game Nerd"'s Spiderman game review with Wi-Fi and 3G... blah, after a minute and a half of loading it was going no where... really fast.
Airplane Mode and enable Wi-Fi... "BOOM" says Frank Caliendo's impression of John Madden.

Of course, it's not really practical if you're calling or texting people all the time and you want to receive calls or texts while watching YouTube videos. If you're bored in a meeting or some stupid social get together and YouTube is your only salvation - you got it.

Hope this helps.

Amazing! I just used the "secret key" to switch my Airport Extreme from "n" to "g-only". And--lo and behold--YouTube now runs A LOT faster so that it is actually usable.

Thanks so much for the tip!

I've had the same problems everyone else had... slooow youtube app. After trying several different settings on my DSL modem and my airport base station, I got it to work by going into my iTouch Wi-Fi settings and configured my network DNS with the following numbers (from opendns.com):
208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
I reset my iTouch and when it booted up, youtube was back to being usable again.

My other settings are:
Airport base station is set to bridge mode.
My DSL modem (actiontec) does the PPPOE and the DHCP. I first tried setting the DNS to static with the above numbers in the modem but it didn't make a difference so I set the DNS back to Dynamic and set the DNS on the iTouch which seems to have done the trick.

Will see if holds...

Another Time Capsule user with same problem. It use to work fine, but now YouTube videos hardly play. I use 802.11N. I'd rather not switch to B.

I had the same problem with a slow wifi (but with the original iPhone). Changing the Airport Extreme setting from "b/g compatible" to "g-only" made the huge difference, lot faster now. Thanks for the tip.