When you see a streaming video it often freezes and the word " buffering " appears with a percentage that reaches up to 100% and then resumes playback. If this buffering appears too often it is not possible to see the video continuously and without interruptions and you have to press Pause, wait a few seconds and then restart playback.
This slow streaming problem depends on two things:
1) The speed of your internet connection
2) The response of the servers on which the video streaming site is based.
If for the second factor there is very little to do, for the first you can at least make a diagnosis and at least check if the problem depends on the computer, on your privider that you pay to surf the internet or on the geographical area where you are .
ADSL tests to measure internet speed were listed on another page of this blog.
They are used to understand the real download and upload speed (upload and download data) that your network can reach, in spite of the provider's declarations.
In recent days, YouTube has also made available a tool to check the ability of a computer connected to the Internet to receive streaming video streams.
The Youtube video test can help users understand why, when you see a video, the word "buffering" always appears and playback stops continuously.
The test can be done by opening a Youtube video on Google Chrome, pressing the right button on the video and then going to the statistics for Nerd .
You will notice the entry Bandwidth, which measures the buffering speed .
To the two factors seen above, a third can be added that concerns a specific connection problem with the streaming site YouTube.com.
On the YouTube diagnostic tool you can start viewing a test video that shows, in the other on the left, the technical information of connection, data reception and streaming flow speed (in fps).
On the other hand, the data on the graph that compares the average speed of data reception on the Internet, in Mbps, by users from all over the world, those of their own country, those of their ISP (provider), city and province, are very interesting. with the measurements of the last 30 days.
As you can see, the average speed of world users is clearly higher than that in Italy.
In my graph (I have a low-cost wireless VPN) I was able to check a connection speed lower than the average of the city in which I am, with enormous variability according to the days.
What can be done if the connection is slow and streaming videos often freeze "> optimize the network connection.
For YouTube specifically, if the streaming goes into fits and starts, the YouTube Light version must be used for slow connections .
