Computers: Downloads fine, Wont buffer worth a crap

[Barry]

Heres a question for anyone that knows about computers.

I live in a center city apartment building. It probably has 600-1000 residents. I have HotWire internet here. The internet is slow as balls. I cant watch youtube videos, vimeo, anything that requires buffering/streaming is extremely slow. It takes me 10 minutes to buffer a 320p 2 minute long youtube video. HOWEVER, if I download a movie (torrents) I reach speeds of 300kb/sec to 1.2Mb/sec and other downloads from elsewhere are decent.

Any idea why it sucks so much? Im thinking mass volumes over limited lines (idk how many lines this building has). Its just weird that I can download at 1mps and not be able to buffer a crappy internet video.

Its even worse because I have fios at my house home, and when im here it feels like dial up.

[Barry]

I forgot to mention, it is not a browser or computer issue. All 3 of my roomates computers suck and so does my iPod.

[3X00-Modified]

Go to speedtest.net and do a full download speed check and note the Ping value... Also do a line quality check if you can to see how much packet loss you have. Sometimes with downloads the ping speed wont affect its overall speed, but it will kill something thats streaming video or audio.

I also googled poor you tube buffer speed and I saw somewhere that some ISP's will limit that download speed to buffer files from you tube to simply protect their own network from being overwhelmed.

[scannerman]

They probably use some sort of traffic shaping for streaming videos. That makes some traffic treated differently than others.

It'll slow down the video loads so they don't use all the bandwidth so there is bandwidth left for things like web pages and downloads.

[Barry]

[Barry]

I think your both right, they must be putting a damper on streaming. Maybe I can find some way around that

[DTMAce]

See if you can setup encrypted connections, that will "hide" what you are using the net for.

Probably some form of QOS setup, limiting the use of streaming, primarily as it sucks the life out of the internet in most cases. Can't say much here, as I use the crap out of NetFlix with my Sony media box. Love it.

[bonecrrusher]

No streaming adult sites for you!

That DL speed is terrible.

[scannerman]

No streaming adult sites for you!

That DL speed is terrible.

that speed is fine for streaming standard def video. not so much for HD though.