The internet is amazing. High-speed fibre internet is a magical invention powered by cats and rainbows.
Unfortunately all the best tech in the world means nothing if you can’t even load that 10 cats 10 boxes video on Youtube.
We tried said experiment with dogs; spent 3 hours picking up cardboard pieces
What causes buffering? A couple of factors actually, let’s get down to them:
- High traffic on video server
- High traffic in home network
- Outdated software/hardware
1. On rare occasions, everyone in the whole world is watching the video at the same time (one hell of a viral video) and this will cause the video to buffer. To confirm this, try loading a video on a different site (Vine etc). If other sites load fast, then it could be the video server being overloaded.
What can you do? Not much actually. Go do other things and check out the video again later. Or you can convince the masses that it’s a wonderful day to go for a picnic so internet traffic will decrease, giving you a chance to watch it exclusively in your dark little room with no sunlight (windows masterfully blocked by your 7 meter monster pillow), perfect for moss to grow on your sweaty, grime covered keyboard.
2. More commonly, someone in the house is hogging up the bandwidth. If you’re on wireless (which means you already get lower speeds) and your roommate is using CAT6 LAN cable connecting the router directly to his 1Gbps duplex enabled Gigabit LAN port while torrenting files (the program is legal, what you share is still subjected to copyright laws) and live-streaming his game on Twitch, chances are you’re not gonna get much of the bandwidth.
CAT6 cable: 6-week-old kitten sleeping in your LAN
What can you do? Thankfully there is something you can do! All Asus routers (actually all routers have it) now come with Quality of Service (QoS) traffic manager built-in. Fire up the settings page, 192.168.1.1 and under Traffic Manager, turn on QoS. Input your bandwidth (what you subscribed for. I’m on 1Gbps so I input 950 000 Kbps) and save. QoS will automatically distribute magical internet depending on the number of devices connected.
If 3 users are online, they each get about 33% (also depending on hardware. Most wireless devices will get between 5Mbps to 300Mbps) of the bandwidth. Use a wired LAN cable to improve your numbers. Protip: Just don’t disconnect your roommate. Internet users have a tendency to go berserk when their supply is removed.
3. Youtube recently launched some videos with experimental 8K resolution settings. As defined by the most knowledgeable entity in this universe (aka Wikipedia), “8K resolution or Full Ultra HD (FUHD) is the highest ultra high definition television (UHDTV) resolution to exist”. Chances are your com can’t handle the information data rate (mine can’t) and the video will stagger (kinda like buffering, but different), even if it has pre-loaded its content.
What I’m trying to say is, sometimes people want to stream youtube or Netflix in the highest settings, and they complain when the video buffers. Their reaction? Posting on FB “Service provider lousy la, who got ISP to recommend?”. If your hardware and software is outdated, even the biggest 2Gbps internet connection won’t do you any good.
What can you do? Get a new com. Specs get outdated every 2-3 years (I’m very lenient here) and computers will degrade. PC slows down after a while? Didn’t get this problem when the PC is new? That’s because it’s getting outdated. Also you probably have malware in your PC.
I’d advise you to choose “Auto” as the video settings. The streaming app will determine your available bandwidth and give you the appropriate quality to load videos with.
If you’re not one to spend $$ on computers, practice good PC hygiene. Don’t download or install shady applications, and make sure you read the fine print during installation wizards. There’s always a checkbox asking your permission to sneakily add programs or change settings and most of the time people miss out on this. “Thank you for installing *insert game name*. Would you like to install ‘A**’ toolbar? and make it your home page? *Yes/No* Thanks!”.
I recommend CCleaner by Piriform to check your PC for junk. It’s simple, fast and easy. Ccleaner also has advance settings such as registry checks and memory wiping (HDD formatting with multiple passes to really delete that information). However it’s a freeware, and as all freeware it comes with a checkbox in the installation wizard to run other programs (their sponsors) so don’t forget to uncheck that box, unless you really like whatever program they’re trying to backdoor you with.