Video buffering problem with most sites? Help Needed!

Snick said:

A few more System specs would help!
What keyboard and mouse are you using?
Have you run Network Troubleshooter on your PC
Click network icon, Troubleshoot problems
Here's a link:

Microsoft TechNet Windows 7: Troubleshooting Connections

Yup did that, it detects no problems. Likewise the link you gave assumes you have problems connecting, I have no such issue. Here's my system I built myself:


Component Selection Price
CPU

Intel - Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
£227.19 Buy
Motherboard

MSI - Z97 PC MATE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory

Kingston - HyperX Fury Black 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
£62.90 Buy
Storage

Seagate - Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
£81.24 Buy
Video Card

MSI - Radeon R9 285 2GB Video Card
Case

Corsair - SPEC-03 Red ATX Mid Tower Case
£44.99 Buy
Power Supply

XFX - TS 650W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply
£89.02 Buy
Monitor

BenQ - GL2250HM 21.5" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor
£89.99 Buy
Keyboard

Cooler Master - CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse
£39.99 Buy

Now I haven't read the thread so closely. But 9Mbit and watching streaming video. sounds very limited. I have 100Mbit and sometimes youtube buffers for me.
Have you done these speed tests on the other devices and they all were stable in every speed test and in the same conditions as your computer?

And this phenomenon is extra noticeable in heavy rain.
If the computer itself is to be affected by the rain, there must become high humidity in the room it is in. an open window as an example
I would first guess that it has something with the line into the house.
The second guess would be that the network card in the computer is defective so that humidity can affect it's circuits.
Is it possible for you to test with an other PC at the same location as you have your current PC and with the same cables?

Marie SWE said:

Now I haven't read the thread so closely. But 9Mbit and watching streaming video. sounds very limited. I have 100Mbit and sometimes youtube buffers for me.
Have you done these speed tests on the other devices and they all were stable in every speed test and in the same conditions as your computer?

And this phenomenon is extra noticeable in heavy rain.
If the computer itself is to be affected by the rain, there must become high humidity in the room it is in. an open window as an example
I would first guess that it has something with the line into the house.
The second guess would be that the network card in the computer is defective so that humidity can affect it's circuits.
Is it possible for you to test with an other PC at the same location as you have your current PC and with the same cables?

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated. 9 MBPS has never been a problem, even now with that speed I get perfect 1080p on my PS3 (netflix) and other devices with no downgrade in quality and no buffering. Same with youtube.

Rain doesn't affect it, so I doubt it's to do with humidity. I noted the heavy rain the day that the problems started only because in the past it affected the cabling at the exchange, resulting in a very unstable connection which had to be fixed by Openreach engineers. On this occasion something similar happened and they must have fixed it, but I was still left with this specific buffering problem on most sites, so I'm not sure if it was a coincidence that it started at the same time as the rain that day.

I don't have another PC to test unfortunately. At first I thought it could be the line going into the house (between the exchange and my property) but when I tested it and it works fine on all other devices (including stable speed tests), it didn't make sense to say it is the line?

Snick said:

Agree with Marie SWE,


I'd also check/compare network settings on your computers, and change settings to match your non-affected machine.

So I wanted to update you guys since you helped me. The network card arrived the same day as the virgin media installation. On the new 100MBPs virgin media connection I got 110 MBPs and....all the problems were completely solved (with the original built in network card)!

When I changed back to the old origin broadband connection I disabled the normal network adapter in device manager and installed the new one, and that also solved all the problems. The speed is now constant and doesn't jump up and down, the buffering is (mostly) gone and downloads are back to normal (original) fast speeds. I think the fact that some buffering does still occur (3 times in 15 min on Iplayer) reflects the only thing which hasn't changed: the max speed is still coming up as 8.9 MBPs (but at least it's now consistent).

So the big question: what actually caused all this? With the original NIC when I plug in the virgin ethernet the problems are gone, so at 1st I thought the culprit must be the Openreach connection (probably within my premises). Then the new NIC solved the problem also so I'm back to thinking it could still be the old NIC which somehow developed a fault (taking into consideration the fact that all other devices were always working fine)?

Before we had the torrential down-pour of rain that day, we used to get around 12 MBPs and immediately after that day and all the problems it brought (re-read the OP) it was 9 MBPs max and completely unstable. Now it's still 9, but stable. The problem is when my current Virgin contract expires the price will go way up and I'll have to go back to an openreach connection, so I really do want to try to figure out the solution. But Origin broadband (and any other company I'm guessing) say if they send out an openreach engineer and their equipment shows my PC to be at fault then I'll be charged £175 or whatever it was!