iPhone 3G + wifi + YouTube = Slow!

AMAZING!!! I went to www.m.youtube.com and selected a clip to test and all of a sudden it started playing and kept going to the end without pauses!!!

You are a freaking genious and i love you!

You tube working everyone if you follow this dudes directions... crap that you can't do it through native app but hey this works!

3zzy wrote:
This ( click) might help?

This really did help! Thank you!

The URL's changed: http://qelix.com/blog/2008/08/31/get-better-wifi-speeds-on-iphone-3g/#comment-13 4

This fix worked for me! The problem was so bad I'd given up on using YouTube on my iPhone over wifi. I used to go into the settings and disable wifi, just so I could force YouTube to connect over 3G! I was beginning to think it was a ploy by the phone company to make me use up my 3G download limit...

Now (finally!) YouTube works over wifi as well as it does on my other computers at home.

yay! setting my wireless router to 802.11b fixed, instead of 802.11b/g mixed, seems to have speeded up my youtube video, so it downloads faster than I can watch it.

yay! yay! yay! yay! yay!

On 8Gb ipod Touch, with 2.2.1 (3.0 in a few days - more yay!).
Cheers
Richard in Melbourne

Just bought the iPhone 3G S, and quickly noticed it had the same slow WiFi problems that others have had with the 3G - not just with YouTube, but in general. I cranked up my old 2G iPhone running OS 2.2.1, and worked just fine on YouTube and any speed test I threw at it. I ran both phones off an old (5 years old) Netgear router (MR814v2) that is wireless B only. So I thought I would try a different router - my iMac sharing the ethernet connection over Airport. This solved the problem all-around. WiFi now works at full speed on my new iPhone. Just thought I would throw this into the mix to confuse people further. Based on what I have read, though, it seems the problem is a complicated one, that of brand compatibility with wireless routers. For those still struggling, I would go out of your way to try as many different routers as possible.

I have a 1st gen iPhone and have had problems streaming YouTube over WiFi ever since OS 2.0. I had exactly the same problems with buffering on OS 3.0. Changing the data rate settings -- i.e., moving down to 802.11b speeds -- worked for me, but I wasn't happy about slowing down the entire wireless network. I have a Belkin Pre-N router.

What really worked for me was keeping my settings on Wireless-G and simply turning off the QoS (802.11e) in the router settings. Now, my web surfing and YouTube streaming all work perfectly. I have no idea if this will work for everyone, but it definitely worked for me. I also used to have problems with sluggishness in retrieving and sending e-mail; these problems are all now gone.

Good luck!

Well, interesting happenings here:

1. iPhone OS3 came, with an updated YouTube app, and me holding my breath that the issue would be fixed. But nope, no good.

2. Installed the speedtest app from App Store, tested to a local server in Auckland (NZ) and getting 4 Mbit/s throughput on the down. Remembering that I have NO issues streaming the full HD YouTube data on my Macbook Pro (Early'08).

3. I had the chance to test YouTube on a mates wireless network last weekend, which is a Netgear, and that worked perfectly, even though his speedtest was down around the 2 Mbit/s for the same local server.

4. Came home to a an orange blinking light on my TimeCapsule last night. Fired up the Macbook Pro, and got advised of a new firmware rev (7.4.2). Scanning the fixlist, I noticed this little gem:

* Fixes an issue with clients that enable 802.11 "Power Save"

5. Installed firmware update on TimeCapsule.

6. YouTube now streams fine for me!!!

YAH!!!

NB: I havent checked out the diags in the AirPort utility yet to see if the 'weird' signal strength readings have been fixed yet either.

Message was edited by: Hoppy

Hi!

I've got exactly the same issue in the past with my 3G. With my FritzBox! WLAN 7140 (quite old 3 Year model) using Youtube over Wi-Fi was a drama (only in G mode, in B mode OK). Everything passed over after changing the router into new Linksys WRT610N, with default settings and the same Internet provider YouTube started to download clips very fast!

Pawel

Well, I just got a new 3gs and was having the same problem.

The solution that worked for me was to look at the Multicast rate on my router. I set my Airport Extreme to the maximum and this solved the problem (though 11 Mbps would have been fine). Though, be aware that increase the rate will decrease the range of your network.

For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast

Cheers

Update.

The AirPort Utility now shows 'normal' statistics for signal and noise for my iPhone.

It USED to initially show a normal statistic (eg -54, -95) and then change to a 'weird' number like 0, 35.

It now continuously shows 'proper' numbers, such as -54, -95, 54 (rate).

Interesting 🙂

I don't think it's the brand of wireless router, because I'm having the same issues using my iPhone and the YouTube app over my Airport Express (i.e., freezing playback after about a minute). An Apple product should work fine with an Apple product, so it's a bug. I don't feel like changing my settings, because we have old and new Macs running wireless in the house.

It's weird how different people need to do different things to resolve this problem. For me, the solution was to change the encryption settings on my access point from TKIP to AES. This was on a Belkin F5D8231-4 v2000.

I tried every setting on the access point and this was the only one that made a difference. All good now.

Ack - this problem seems more prevelant than I initially thought. I have the same issue myself with an iPhone 3GS using an Airport Express bridged to an Airport Extreme. The expresd is providing B/G connectivity, while the extreme is acting only as a router (wireless disabled).

Definitely have enough bandwidth - 18Mbps both up and down according to speedtest, so that's not an issue.

Unfortunately it looks like the 3.1 update did nothing to fix this either - hopefully one of the workarounds listed will work with my odd network setup.

I have been fighting this slow problem for several weeks, here is what I wrote up on it. BTW I got a replacement 3gs and it did not help. Being an electrical engineer I believe it is an engineering defect in the 3gs that only affects a certain type of wifi network.

I have 3 iPhones (original, 3g and 3gs). The problem is that the 3gs is too slow on my home wifi network. The speed test of the 3gs registers about 300 where the 3g and original iPhones register over 1000 in a speed test. This problem also shows up when viewing videos such as You Tube videos.

At my work and at the Apple store the wireless speed of the 3gs is good, around 5000.

I have reset all the settings on the iPhone and that did not help. I was on the phone with Apple support and did a complete restore to the factory settings and that did not help.

I have DSL service and use an Action Tec DSL modem and a Belkin wireless access point. I completely replaced the Belkin access point with another brand and that did not help. I reset and check the DSL modem settings and that did not help.

We live in the mountains so the only high speed service is DSL. I went to two different neighbors that have wifi and took my phones. Again the 3gs was slow and the original iPhone was fast.

I was at the genius bar and the phone tested fine. I took it home and did another complete restore to the factory settings and tested speed without any applications loaded. This did not help.

I went back to the genius bar and received a replacement phone and took it home and before I did a restore, I tested the phone on You Tube and it was still slow. I loaded only the speed test application and it was still slow.

I have talked to Qwest DSL technical support and they confirmed that there was no problem with my service.

Having the same problem with 3GS, only nothing seems to help. Not using m.youtube.com, not setting the router to 802.11b, nor any of the other setting suggestions out there. Moreover, the same thing happens on other streaming video sites that work on the iPhone too, like Dailymotion.

Meanwhile, Wi-fi as a whole is very slow on the iPhone - testing around 1-2 Mbps instead of the 8-10 I get on my other wi-fi connections. But this alone doesn't seem to be the problem here, since it just STOPS loading the video entirely, no matter how long I wait.