There are a few things posted by GottaBeMobile you can try in order to alleviate most YouTube buffering problems, most of which are really easy to do and some may take a little extra effort on your part.

Check to see if anything else is hogging up bandwidth: If YouTube videos are sputtering, check to see if there’s anything else on your home network that might be hogging up bandwidth. You may not know it, but it’s possible that your kids or a roommate is already watching YouTube videos of their own, and many Internet connections can only handle so much bandwidth.

If this is the case, politely ask them to stop so that you can watch your YouTube videos real quick, or you can be real evil and block their IP address from accessing the Internet, although that takes a bit of networking finesse.

Plug into an ethernet connection if you’re on a laptop — A hard-wired connection is always faster and more reliable than a wireless connection, so if you’re having problems with YouTube videos playing nicely, plug your laptop into ethernet to get the best possible connection.

Sit closer to the router: If you can’t connect to ethernet because you’re on a mobile device, like a smartphone or tablet, the next best thing to do is sit closer to the router. The farther you are away from the router, the weaker your Internet connection gets, especially if there are walls between you and the router.

Sitting closer to the router will improve your Internet connection and could be the difference between buffering, sputtering videos and smooth-playing HD content.

Update your software: Usually we wouldn’t necessarily suggest users update their software in order to fix a buffering YouTube video, but it can work sometimes. Updating your web browser and other pieces of software that deal with video (such as Adobe Flash) could possibly fix issues that you’re having with unstable video, but more often than not, it’s usually just an Internet connection problem.

When all else fails, restart everything: If none of the above seem to be working, simply restarting your router and/or your computer or mobile device can give everything a fresh start. Restarting a router is good to do every few weeks anyway, because it clears out any leftover Internet crud that’s been building up (there’s obviously a more technical term for it).

When you restart a router, it’s recommended that you do it the thorough way, which is to shut it off and unplug it from its power source for at least 30 seconds. Then plug it back in and turn it on. You’ll want to give it a couple of minutes to completely start back up, but once it’s up and running again, you should be greeted with a fresh Internet connection where you don’t have to deal with sputtering YouTube videos anymore.