Fast downloads but slow browsing speeds

[karansaraf]

I'm using a 2013 retina MBP with Yosemite 10.10.1

I can download stuff on torrents at 700-800kbps (over wifi). That's fine. But my safari browsing speeds over wifi are considerably slower. For example, Youtube videos should be loading fast enough to just play the whole video but I often have to pause 4 minute videos in the middle to enable the rest to load. Websites take a few seconds.

Any suggestions?

 

[chabig]

I think 700-800kbps is very very slow these days. I'm not surprised you have to wait for videos to load.

 

[w0lf]

I agree with the person above. You could probably just lower the quality to 720/480p and be fine but your connection speed would probably struggle to stream 1080p with consistency.

 

[karansaraf]

I know it's not super fast in relative terms, but if I can download a 1gb movie file in 20 minutes, and episodes of TV shows in less than 4 minutes then I should be able to stream a 3-4 minute video on youtube (a lot of which were uploaded before youtube allowed 1080) without lagging. And websites should load pretty instantaneously, not (in some cases) 5-10 seconds when they're not even that graphic rich.

I think it has something to do with the Yosemite upgrade, because I didn't really have these problems on Mavericks.

 

[chabig]

Well then, if you can get movies and TV shows in those times your connection is much faster than 700-800 kbps. The only thing I can say is that you can't compare a file download to web page loading. During a download, there is a connection made, then the data moves. When loading a web page, multiple connections get made (one for every element), from multiple servers. If a page loads slowly, it's probably due to latency in setting up the connections. Then it's possible that one or more of those web servers may be slow to respond or deliver data.

My best guess is that your DNS (domain name server) is not very fast. Make sure you're using the settings your ISP recommends. If that's still too slow, consider switching to another DNS. Here's how: http://www.howtogeek.com/164981/how-to-switch-to-opendns-or-google-dns-to-speed-up-web-browsing/

 

[freeskier93]

I know it's not super fast in relative terms, but if I can download a 1gb movie file in 20 minutes, and episodes of TV shows in less than 4 minutes then I should be able to stream a 3-4 minute video on youtube (a lot of which were uploaded before youtube allowed 1080) without lagging. And websites should load pretty instantaneously, not (in some cases) 5-10 seconds when they're not even that graphic rich.

I think it has something to do with the Yosemite upgrade, because I didn't really have these problems on Mavericks.

7-800 kbps is very slow... It is not even close to physically possible to download a 1GB file in 20 min on that connection.

 

[karansaraf]

7-800 kbps is very slow... It is not even close to physically possible to download a 1GB file in 20 min on that connection.

Perhaps I should have written KBps? I meant kilobytes, not kilobits.

Otherwise...

800kilobytes per second x 60 = 48,000 kilobytes per minute

48,000 kilobytes per minute x 20 = 960,000 kilobytes per twenty minutes

960,000 kilobytes per twenty minutes / 1000 = 960mb per twenty minutes

1gb = 1024mb

1024mb - 960mb = 64mb




Thanks for the suggestion chabig, I will give it a go.