How To Make YouTube Streaming Significantly Faster On Windows
I do not know about you, but in recent times, YouTube has been acting agonizingly slow across all my computers. I have a 1mbps connection, which should technically provide smooth streaming of 480p video, but it regularly has trouble even with 240p video. Thankfully, we have come across a very simple hack that will significantly improve your YouTube video-viewing experience. Check it out after the jump.
Disclaimer: Follow this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips will not be held responsible if running this command has any negative consequences.
The hack comes from Mitchell Ribar’s personal blog. It involves running a one-line command in Command Prompt. So let’s get right to it.
Launch Comamnd Prompt as Administrator on your Windows PC. To do so, hit the Windows button, type ‘cmd’, right-click Command Prompt’s icon and click  ‘Run as administrator’. Make sure to click on ‘Yes’ on the User Account Control (UAC) window if it pops up.
Now copy the following command exactly as it appears:
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="YouTubePerformanceHack" dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes
Right-click anywhere in the Command Prompt window and click ‘Paste’. (CTRL+C and CTRL+V do not work in Command Prompt.)
Press Enter to execute the command. If everything goes well, you should get an ‘Ok.’ response, as shown below.
Now, go ahead and load a YouTube video in your browser. You should see significantly improved buffering performance. I was successfully able to stream videos in 480p resolution without any hiccups after implementing this hack. As a matter of fact, 720p videos that were completely out of reach for me also work now, albeit with a little buffering.
So, how and why does this command work? Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throttle downloads from servers that host cached videos, such those by YouTube. Running this command forces YouTube’s servers to push the video to you directly instead of the cached version, bypassing your ISP’s throttling.
Since this command blocks a massive range of IP addresses belonging to Google and XO’s content delivery network, it may cause issues with connecting to some random website in the future that uses these IP addresses. With that in mind, you can easily remove Ribar’s hack by running the following command in command prompt again:
netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name="YouTubePerformanceHack"
Go ahead and try it out on your Windows PC. Don’t forget to let us know how it works for you.
[via Mitch’s Space]
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it keeps saying “the requested operation requires elevation ” help please?
thanks for the link. i didnt know options other than youtube
Awesome! Something I was looking for a long time. Works genuinely!
Says “Requires elevation”
Open CMD as administrator
Works like a charm. I’m using the same internet as a crapload of students in my dorm, and using YouTube used to be nearly impossible.
XP?
Hi, I used this youtube trick before some couple of days. I am not so sure if that worked or not. But I have a new problem now. Everytime I download a video from youtube by catching its link with idm software, it downloads the file completely. After successfully downloading the video, when I want to play it with a media player, all I see is a black screen instead of the actual video or audio. The file shows to be downloaded completely. The software is registered. The video also hogs the actual space which it should. The seek bar also moves normally. I have re installed the softwares. Cleaned the registry with ccleaner, deleted this youtube performance hack. Still no result. Please help me asap.
why don’t you peoples use the speed bit video accelerator, works like a charm
because that is a browser hack program, don’t use it, search and see what I mean, not cool, don’t recommend this junk to people
I guess there are some good versions out there after searching more, but most people have had hijack problems from it, my bad
in cmd, it noted:
the following command was not found: advfirewall firewall add rule name=”YouTubePerformanceHack” dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes
Please advise what should i do ?
thx
it’s wrong. you have to type netsh* at the beginning, like this:
netsh* advfirewall firewall add rule name=”YouTubePerformanceHack” dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enable=yes
thats just the error that comes up it doesnt show the netsh that was typed.
Fantastic! Thanks!
it blocks the itunes downloading app, dont know why, when i set the rule, itunes gives error (-50) , when i removes this rule, everything is fine with itunes.
how about in win xp.Seem not working .Got error
The following command was not found: advfirewall firewall add rule name=YouTubeP
erformanceHack dir=in action=block remoteip=173.194.55.0/24,206.111.0.0/16 enabl
e=yes.
Works like a charm.. I have a 5Mb broadband connection, and I barely play HD videos.. now.. I CAN !! thanks !!
I used the code on CMD but now its not opening any youtube video on Chrome..
tried it and i see no change on performance. my youtube is still slow and i have 20mbps broadband connection
Works here! thanks
Any idea how to do this on a router? Please let me know 🙂
Unfortunately I do not use the default Windows firewall.
Something similar for Linux?
or OS X?
Maybe…?
iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp –dest 173.194.55.0/24 -j DROP
iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp –dest 206.111.0.0/16 -j DROP