The YouTube video speed history shows the past video speeds of YouTube videos you watched from your location (your current browser at your current IP address). It also shows aggregate video speed by other users in your city, state, country, and worldwide. You may ask – why is this important to you?
Video speed is an important part of your viewing experience since it determines the amount of time you need to wait before you can start watching a video. It is also an important factor in determining the quality of the video you can watch. By making the video speed history data available, YouTube hopes to better inform you of speed issues as they relate to your viewing experience, and give you the ability to compare your speed numbers with other users in your region.
To see your YouTube video speed history, you can just navigate to http://www.youtube.com/my_speed in your browser. You should use the same browser you often use for watching videos on YouTube. The video speed history results vary based upon your web browser and the IP address. If you have a dynamic IP address, then you may not be able to find your own results.
The YouTube video speed history is shown in both bar graphs and line graphs. The bar graph is shown on the right side to the line graph. While the bar graph shows the average speed, the line graph shows the speed variation over a period of one month.
First bar (from the left) shows your own ISP speed, next bar shows your city speed, then your state/area speed, then your country/region and the last bar shows the global speed. The line graph is also plotted using the same values.
You can also see the video speed in realtime by clicking on Show test video link. A video would start playing on the same page, you have to look next to “Streaming HTTP” on the top-left corner of the video.
For more information about YouTube video speed history you can check Google frequently asked question here : http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=174122.