iPhone 3G S - YouTube over Wifi issue (Please help me verify this)

Same problem here.. It stops loading...

I had a video-locks-up with the OP's video and also some others. The problem seems to have disappeared after I restarted my two back-to-backed AirPort Extreme routers and my cable modem.

I have two connected AEs because one does 802.11n and the other, which hooks directly to the cable modem, does 802.11g. I probably ought to reconfigure, but I doubt that's important. What seems to be important is that restarting my network gear keeps seemingly all YouTube videos from locking up.

Based on earlier posts in this thread, it seems only the iPhone 3GS has this problem, not other iPhones, and only when using WiFi, not 3G or EDGE. My interpretation is that something odd is happening in which the router (or just possibly the cable modem) is involved in some kind of anomalous situation (perhaps a packet gets dropped), and, when that event interrupts a YouTube download, the 3GS can't recover. Nor can the router, on its own. Restarting the router (or modem) clears it up (at least, in my own case, it seems to).

I don't know if this would carry over to non-Apple routers.

If I'm diagnosing the problem right, I have to hope revised iPhone software would allow it to "kick start" a stuck router without any user intervention. That is, I imagine the real fault in in the iPhone software's error recovery capability, even though the router is where the error crops up.

From all I've read it seems pretty clear that this is a bandwidth matching issue that is causing an error condition. The YouTube app tries to match the quality (and bandwidth) of the video to the Internet bandwidth that the iPhone has at the time. This is why the video quality at 3G is lower. When on a wifi G connection, with a theoretical speed of 54mbps, the YouTube app decides to send the highest quality video stream, and clearly for some reason the iPhone can't handle it and gags. If you drop your wifi to only B mode, with a speed of 11mbps, the YouTube app picks a video quality that the iPhone can handle and things work better.

So that, I believe, explains the problem and why some workarounds work. Hopefully Apple will provide a real solution.

Yep, same problem! I have 30 mbps on Macbook with my Wifi speed test and on mobile speed test I get 11.6 mbps download and 0.94 upload. I have the same exact problem. Youtube is extremely slow. I also don't have the luxury to switch to WEP since I have an airport extreme which DOESN'T HAVE A WEP OPTION. Also can't switch to just b on airport extreme, you're stuck with the dual band. Maybe I should stop buying apple products all together! Called apple support the guy told me to switch the channels from auto to manual and pick different channels on my airport extreme. Everything else seem to have improved except YouTube. It is dreadfully slow and I constantly need to switch to 3Gs to watch grainy videos. This is unacceptable!

RESOLUTION:

I have resolved the exact same issue by changing my wireless router to B/G mixed from the "mixed" network mode, if you use a wireless router log into it and go under wireless then network mode and switch to b/g mixed or set it to "G" only this will fix your issue, do not use the "mixed" only setting. Hope this helps a lot of people out there:)

victorvillatoro at gmail dot com

I have an Air Port Extreme and an iPhone 3GS and I'm having the same problem described here. Youtube videos will play about halfway through until buffering stops and then the video eventually freezes. Changing my router to B or even G isn't a solution because network access for my Macs will be slowed down also. This is really annoying because I'm a Youtube addict and I can't watch my videos. Please fix this Apple. Thank you.

I am having the same issues, just upgraded from the 3g to 3gs, did not have this issue with the 3g, wifi sometimes will not connect at all to the internet and the signal strengh fluctuates even when standing next to the router. not sure what to do adout this, tec support had me do a system restore but that did not fix the problem.

Same issues I think.

Launch Youtube and it takes absolutely forever to even start streaming.

Test your iphone speed here - from safari - what do you get?

iphonenetworktest.com
testmy.net

this happens to me to

I'm having this problem on both mine and my wifes iPhone 3Gs. It never happened on our older Gen 1 iPhones (and still doesn't with them set to WiFi). Basically all the same symptoms as everyone else. Video loads over WiFi only to about 1.5 minutes and then freezes, poor signal strength when standing right next to the router, etc.

I'm also using an Airport Extreme. Can someone tell me how to set it to 802.11G ONLY? I looked through the AirPort utility and didn't see that as an option.

I tried the "Interference Robustness" option and it didn't do anything except slow down the time it takes to buffer to the "freeze-point". I submitted feedback with the link on page one of this thread. This <Apple won't let me use the word that describes what a vacuum cleaner does>!

Jason Smith

Message was edited by: jasonsmith8

all types of videos on wifi or 3G will not load on my iPhone 3GS.
The plug-in is enabled in safari, and the youtube app doesn't work either.

This thread started back in June and there's still no fix for loyal Apple fans using Airport Extreme for wi-fi access with our iPhones. What's up with this? Very frustrating!