YouTube running very slowly while I have ~50-60 mbps speeds according to speedtest.net

Support Network
1

The title is pretty self explanatory; I have ~50-60 mbps download speeds on speedtest.net, but YouTube takes ridiculously long to load a video. I’m dualbooting Manjaro KDE with Windows 10, and on Windows I’m getting similar speedtest.net values, but YouTube is way better. I use Firefox on Manjaro and MS Edge on Windows. I have fast startup disabled on Windows. My network card is Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW.

inxi -Fazy:

System:
  Kernel: 5.15.16-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.15-x86_64
    root=UUID=d40977fe-d7fc-4898-8ffe-20fc21fab037 rw quiet apparmor=1
    security=apparmor resume=UUID=4dccc5d9-cde4-4fc2-bc59-bb1706b53a7c
    udev.log_priority=3
  Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.23.5 tk: Qt 5.15.2 info: latte-dock wm: kwin_x11
    vt: 1 dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Convertible System: HP product: HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14-ba1xx
    v: Type1ProductConfigId serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 31
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: HP model: 83C4 v: 31.61 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Insyde
    v: F.53 date: 05/16/2019
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 21.9 Wh (100.0%) condition: 21.9/21.9 Wh (100.0%)
    volts: 12.8 min: 11.6 model: 333-54-5D-A BK03041XL type: Li-ion
    serial: <filter> status: Full
  Device-1: hid-0018:04F3:251C.0002-battery model: ELAN0732:00 04F3:251C
    serial: N/A charge: N/A status: N/A
CPU:
  Info: model: Intel Core i5-8250U bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Coffee Lake
    family: 6 model-id: 0x8E (142) stepping: 0xA (10) microcode: 0xEA
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 4 tpc: 2 threads: 8 smt: enabled cache:
    L1: 256 KiB desc: d-4x32 KiB; i-4x32 KiB L2: 1024 KiB desc: 4x256 KiB
    L3: 6 MiB desc: 1x6 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 800 min/max: 400/3400 scaling: driver: intel_pstate
    governor: powersave cores: 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800
    8: 800 bogomips: 28808
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
  Type: l1tf
    mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
  Type: spec_store_bypass
    mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
  Type: spectre_v1
    mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional,
    IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling
  Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 620 vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: i915
    v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5917 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: Chicony HP Wide Vision HD Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 1-4:3 chip-ID: 04f2:b5d6 class-ID: 0e02
  Display: x11 server: X.org 1.21.1.3 compositor: kwin_x11 driver:
    loaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo>
  Message: Unable to show advanced data. Required tool glxinfo missing.
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl bus-ID: 00:1f.3
    chip-ID: 8086:9d71 class-ID: 0403
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.16-1-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.20 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.43 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW [Stone Peak] driver: iwlwifi
    v: kernel bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:24fb class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless-AC 3168 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
    bus-ID: 1-5:4 chip-ID: 8087:0aa7 class-ID: e001
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 401.77 GiB (43.1%)
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Toshiba model: MQ04ABF100
    size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s
    type: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> rev: 1C scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 29.3 GiB size: 28.67 GiB (97.86%) used: 16.56 GiB (57.8%)
    fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6 maj-min: 8:6
  ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 260 MiB size: 256 MiB (98.46%)
    used: 65.9 MiB (25.7%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
  ID-3: /home raw-size: 58.59 GiB size: 57.37 GiB (97.92%)
    used: 3.94 GiB (6.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda8 maj-min: 8:8
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 7.81 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
    priority: -2 dev: /dev/sda7 maj-min: 8:7
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0 C pch: 37.5 C mobo: 37.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 249 Uptime: 35m wakeups: 3 Memory: 15.5 GiB
  used: 4.14 GiB (26.7%) Init: systemd v: 250 tool: systemctl Compilers:
  gcc: 11.1.0 clang: 13.0.0 Packages: 1297 pacman: 1285 lib: 342 flatpak: 4
  snap: 8 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.16 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.12

(I hope I posted this in the right spot, I’m new to Manjaro, these forums, and Linux itself).

2

What is slow? Is it the actual download (buffering like it’s 1990) or is the playback stuttering?

In which part of the world are you? There might be traffic shaping for blocking/censoring/reducing traffic from YouTube.

You could try downloading the video with yt-dlp to check if it’s the browser.

3

Does the same thing happen in another browser in Manjaro?

4

I think your issue may be connected with the video driver being used. I solved my problem by changing the driver to intel-media-driver. My i5 uses iris 6100 and I also have KDE installed on that machine.

Hope this helps.

5

United States. It takes a long time to load, and also sometimes if I pause the video and unpause it it takes a long time and Firefox starts to glitch out, and when it finally works there is no audio. How would I use that command?

6

I think so…

7

… is that a “yes” or a “no” ?
as it is, it is not an answer to the question …

… just saying … :wink:

8

Can’t be less clear.

9

It’s bad on Chromium too.

Not sure how to describe it, it stops responding and won’t let me minimize the video, and I can’t switch tabs.

How would I do this? Noob at Linux here.

10

Maybe the ondemand governor would be better to be able to have proper CPU performance when demanding application like video decoding is running. That wouldn’t fix browser freeze but that would make better use of CPU.

In Firefox try to go to the Settings, then scroll down, and find the Performance part, untick the “Use recommended settings” box, and tick the “Use hardware acceleration if available” box.

11

We have verrified it is not a general network issue and works OK on other OS or devices?
Alright …
Please follow @omano’s suuggestion above about toggling the Hardware Acceleration option.

Can we please also verify that youtube is not simply an example?
Is it specifically videos and such that are the issue? Or is it any sort of ‘prolonged’ download ?

Some tools to check;

Ping google (you may use any public IP but this is reasonably ‘generic’)

ping 8.8.8.8

(let it run for a while and hit CTRL+C to stop it… any spikes in response time or packet loss?)

Similarly you may execute a longer download like

curl -L -O --retry 999 --retry-max-time 0 -C - https://archive.org/download/BigBuckBunny_124/Content/big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.avi

(once again you may cancel the operation at any time by using CTRL+C)

NOTE - the above commands are intended to be run in your terminal emulator … as you are on KDE I would expect this to be either yakuake or konsole