Fast Internet, Slow Buffering Speeds that only improve when using VPN

I’m at my wits end currently. Been an on-and-off issue for weeks now, not sure what started it.

I have very good latency and download speeds. Every test I’ve taken shows that hasn’t changed. However, when using a variety of websites, my buffering speed is atrocious. Youtube defaults to the lowest resolution and stops playing seconds in, resulting in an extremely long buffer loop; ads won’t even buffer to completion. Amazon won’t load media or occasionally even pages beyond the home page. Facebook will not load media and won’t scroll down. Various annoying things like that.

Also to be clear, my issue remains isolated to just this machine. Other laptops, consoles, phones, do not have the same issue I’ve been dealing with on my personal PC.

I have tried changing my dns server, I have run integrity scans on my system and on my memory, all of which has come back clean. The only two things that momentarily would fix the issue would be cleaning Microsoft Edge’s browser cache (which has since stopped being useful, or would stop being useful upon relogging into my stuff), and updating my NVIDEA driver offhand once, which seemed to resolve the issue momentarily.

The only thing that 100% without a doubt resolve the problem momentarily is using a VPN. I throw a VPN on, my browser runs smoothly and without any of the previous issues mentioned. I turn it off, it’s back to the same issues. Which makes me think the problem might be network related, but honestly I’m just throwing darts everywhere trying to resolve the root of the problem.

Additional things I’ve tried in vain are resetting my router, restarting my PC, running an entire system scan with Malwarebytes, etc.

If anyone has any insight at all or things that might be worth attempting, I’m all ears.

EDIT: Testing other streaming platforms; some work seamlessly (Netflix, Dropout), others won’t even load the player (Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime Video).

You say it’s getting better with VPN so that tells (?) it’s a network thing. Have you tried to reset your network DNS/TCP? I use to do that once in a while with a smooth program /whenever it’s starting to buffer loop (just as you describe it and I have no idea why either) and the reset clicks it right back to normal again.

Crunchyroll use AWS, Amazon’s cloud service. But it still doesn’t make sense that only your laptop has a problem because if it’s ISP bad routing then the entire house should’ve been affected. Have you tried Firefox, and ensure no proxy settings are enabled?

If you download a Linux live USB like Ubuntu or Mint and then boot it on your PC (it won’t touch the Windows partitions unless you tell it to), does it work normally?

Xfinity user, all google searches tell me they don’t permit DNS resets.

Tested Firefox both with and without VPN, has been very fickle and runs poorly more than not. Not my primary browser and I don’t use it often so I don’t have a baseline to compare it back to. No proxy settings enabled as far as I can tell, wouldn’t have known how to enable them in the first place.

Chrome works under similar circumstance to Edge right now, which is with VPN good, without VPN bad. YouTube runs how it’s supposed to while using a VPN, can scrub instantly across the video player.

Haven’t tried any Linux/Ubuntu stuff out.

Ah ok! Have you tried the secondary DNS?

Primary DNS: 75.75. 75.75. Secondary DNS: 75.75. 76.76

Try visiting ipinfo.io on all browsers, including on other devices. If there’s no proxy, all should show the same public IP.

Chrome and Edge use Windows proxy settings, Firefox has its own config. Try temporarily disabling your AV internet protection.

I’ve attempted swapping to both Cloudflare and Google’s DNS primary and secondary settings and neither seem to want to cooperate, probably due to the router I was issued by Xfinity. I get outright told when trying to validate the settings for ipv6 that they won’t work.

Info remained consistent across Chrome, Edge, Firefox and my mobile browser.

Might be a viable lead, but I disabled my Avast WebShield temporarily and the issue with my YouTube buffering did basically alleviate immediately. Turned it back on and it has gone back to chugging.

Not sure what or why in the hell Avast would be suddenly taking issue with after years of no prior issues, or why its own VPN being on is the exception to the rule. But yeah, turning it off temporarily did solve the issue somewhat.

Ok, complain to their support then.

I haven’t used AV since Windows 7. If you are running Windows 10 or above and have everything patched and updated, you shouldn’t need a AV.