What determines the speed of Youtube videos and such?

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My computer info. is the following

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... ct=3444107

Some videos load slow and others seem fast. is this due to my computer or internet speed or perhaps an abundance of people watching the video? BTW my speed is a little over 2mb VERY SLOW! I thought it was supposed to be close to 7 or does that fluctuate? Thanks computer experts!

It could be due to the time you watch it, at 5 4 o clock on a friday after noon the internet is packed, 11 oclock monday morning... empty
if u share a broadband conection via a router or something then if the other person is say downloading something your speed will be affected greatly
or it could be that some vidoes are just damn slow:(

The way I see it, it could either be the speed of your connection or if YouTube has gone weird.

I have a router and I share connection with the pc's all in the house and during the daytime, I normally get affected by it that my youtube videos takes ages to load up, even when loading up HD quality.

Has your router got security enabled? If not, I highly recommend you to secure it so that other people in your neighbourhood steal your connection and slow down your internet and risk getting more viruses/hackers.

It depends on how busy the Internet is.

It is almost 100% bandwidth. Youtube videos are too low res and generally even a low spec computer like the first ASUS eees could play them provided there was enough bandwidth.

These things can affect how well YouTube videos play:

• The speed of your processor
• The amount of RAM your computer has
• Which operating system you are running(Windows XP/Windows Vista/Linux/Mac OS X)
• Which browser you're using(Internet Explorer/Firefox/Safari)
• Which version of Flash is installed
• What else your computer is doing when you are trying to watch videos(like if you have a lot of things open)
• The speed of your internet connection(sometimes speed between your computer but more often speed between your router and your internet service provider)
• If your internet service provider has specifically throttled your speed down(This is rare, and is done usually only if the people in your home download much more than an average customer)
• How many people are using your internet connection(family members)
• How many people are downloading or uploading things at some point between your home and YouTube's server
• The quality of the video you are watching(Higher-quality videos usually download more slowly and are more likely to jerk or stop when being played)

1. Make sure your computer has as much memory as possible. If not, I recommend getting more from http://crucial.com
2. If you're currently using Safari, use Firefox instead. Firefox is available from http://getfirefox.com
3. Make sure you have the latest version of Flash. Flash is available from http://adobe.com/flashplayer
4. Make sure as few programs are running as possible.
5. Check your internet connection speed, so you know if it might be going too slow and you might need to call your internet service provider to get them to fix it. You can check that by going here: http://speakeasy.net/speedtest

If you have dial-up internet like me all YouTube videos are un-watchable - unless I really want to wait half an hour for a few seconds clip to download. So for me the Flashblock add-on for Firefox is essential. Lots of sites now have crappy flash adverts... even my bank.

could be a number of things

-your internet connection speed/quality itself
-which version of flash player you have
-time of day
-etc

Now I like to see the OP return and say if any of the above information was helpful to him or not!

*love threads about my special interest*

Mostly it depends on the server that YouTube themselves host the video at.

Like you said, some videos load super fast, some take forever...it's just the luck of the draw, really.