Play store Speeds Ridiculously Slow on WiFi

[nyyankees1237]

Sorry if this is the wrong thread and I've looked across the entire Internet and I'm about to pull my hair out.

Across all three of my devices; Galaxy Note 8, Galaxy S3, and Nexus 4, my download speeds for downloading and updating apps on the Google Play Store have been unbearably slow, taking 20+ minutes to download 5mb. Only while using wifi though. HSPA+ data through T-Mobile is quick and painless.

I have Verizon Fios as my ISP. I've seen numerous other threads complaining about this issue across the Web but none offer any type of explanation or solution. While restarting the router/modem alleviates the problem for a few minutes, it's no use..

Also, might I add that YouTube has been unusable as well do to awful buffering. I think there may be a conflict between Fios and Google's servers. Whatever this is, I'm getting fed up. I can't download or update any apps on my Nexus 4 that I just got today, not to mention on any of my devices at all. Can someone offer any insight on this very annoying and unexplainable issue?

PS: I know it's not my Internet, speed tests reveal 20megs down and 5 up across all three devices and general Internet usage is awesome. Only YouTube and the Play Store have been affected.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[Skaeight]

I'm seeing the same thing with my Nexus 4. I actually just rooted it and installed the Motley kernel w/ the fixed wifi drivers, because I thought this was being caused by the known wifi bug on the phone, but i'm still getting this issue. The wifi does stay away during sleep now at least though.

Does anyone have any ideas what's going on? Play music downloads are equally slow. Downloads of both are fine and at expected speeds over AT&T.

Also, I just noticed you said you have Fios. I have Verizon DSL. Maybe it's a verizon issue? I've even tried switching my DNS to googles DNS severs, but it doesn't help.

 

[nyyankees1237]

I'm seeing the same thing with my Nexus 4. I actually just rooted it and installed the Motley kernel w/ the fixed wifi drivers, because I thought this was being caused by the known wifi bug on the phone, but i'm still getting this issue. The wifi does stay away during sleep now at least though.

Does anyone have any ideas what's going on? Play music downloads are equally slow. Downloads of both are fine and at expected speeds over AT&T.

Also, I just noticed you said you have Fios. I have Verizon DSL. Maybe it's a verizon issue? I've even tried switching my DNS to googles DNS severs, but it doesn't help.

Do you have FiOS? Because a couple of guys on xda and I have narrowed it down to people who have FiOS and have determined it is a problem with Verizon and their correlation with Google's servers.

This could be the possible problem but then again Idk. I'm experiencing this across all devices,not just the N⁴.

EDIT: sorry didn't see that last paragraph there. Yeah it's definitely a Verizon - Google issue.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[Skaeight]

Well I guess its good to know its not a nexus 4 issue. How the heck are we going to get Verizon to fix this though. Do u have the link to the XDA thread?

 

[nyyankees1237]

Well I guess its good to know its not a nexus 4 issue. How the heck are we going to get Verizon to fix this though. Do u have the link to the XDA thread?

Sure, I started the thread as well. Hopefully we can all figure out something.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2301753

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[Skaeight]

Fwiw this has been happening to me for a week (when I got my nexus 4). Sometimes its slower than others - its really bad right now. I had an android phone last fall and this wasn't an issue at that time.

 

[Greg Welch]

Im having the same exact problem with the LTE data connection on my new Galaxy S4 on Verizon.

 

[Skaeight]

Speeds are normal this morning. I'll see how it goes tonight.

 

[triplecore#AC]

I think it has to do with Fios personal. I have fios at home and slow downloads, at work also Verizon Fiber behind a forti ids no use, my apt in the city comcast no issues. I think it has to do with residential fios. I mean 3g is faster!

 

[Skaeight]

Things actually seem to be working OK tonight. Maybe Verizon techs read this forum and XDA?

 

[hexbyte]

I am on AT&T, and my Play Store updates are Very slow lately. Has anybody figured this one out yet?

 

[hugh_h]

I'm seeing this too! Last night I tried to download a 24.5MB utility. I watched my Galaxy S4, touching it every ten minutes to stop it from going to sleep. After 3 hours I fell asleep and the download timed-out sometime during the night.

This morning, I shut off WiFi and it took around 30 seconds to download the same utility on 4G.

Today I put a wireless access point behind a network sniffer and tried it again on another file. Apparently Google has different feeds to the general internet, and wireless carriers, because IP packets were few and FAR between when communicating with Play Store over WiFi!!! Internal network, and browser speeds were as expected.

For phone users with data plans, this is just an inconvenience, but for people with tablets using only WiFi, this is a KILLER!

 

[hugh_h]

I think I may have SOLVED this!
(for Galaxy S4 anyway). Since it is apparently an intermittent problem, I may not, but here is what I assembled/figured out, and what I'm going with until it proves unsuccessful:

The issue may be slow/chained DNS servers. I know on my desktops, I use the AT&T "native" DNS entries DNS1: 68.94.156.1 & DNS2: 68.94.157.1 and that seems to work better than the "router" address which is fed to workstations that are on DHCP. The solution I'm using now involves going from DHCP to a Static IP address, which enables hand-entry of the DNS addresses. (nothing else I've tried has changed the DNS entries when a dynamic address is used) First, you should access your router and determine the DHCP range, then pick an address outside (usually below) that nothing else is sitting on (ping it from a desktop to be sure)
While you're in the router, find the "actual" DNS entries for your ISP. If you have trouble, try here:
USA DNS Servers - What's My DNS?

(with your new Static IP address and both DNS entries...)
Go to Settings | Connections | WiFi and long-press on the access point you're connected to. Touch "Modify network config" Check the "Show Advanced Settings" box. That will turn on more info. Changing "IP settings" from DHCP to Static will reveal the rest. Enter the Static IP address you chose in place of the last octet. Slide down and enter the DNS entries you found in DNS1 & DNS2. You may decide to use Google's fiber network DNS for the second one -- it's 8.8.8.8. Then Save.

After doing this, my ****-poor Play Store performance (on WiFi) opened up enormously!

Note that the DNS entries, and static status are network-specific, since you assign the values to the access point config, so you may need to repeat this process for every WiFi site you frequent and want to use Play Store on.

 

[tcelias]

Alternate solution(for those who have Titanium Backup), there may be another way manually without having to purchase Titanium, I'll leave that to the experts. I tried everything above and didn't help my situation.

• Launch Titanium Backup
• Backup/Restore tab, then find Google Play services and select
• Wipe Data
• Exit

Re-launched Play store and downloads were back to normal at substantially faster speeds.
Hope it helps for some.

 

[rtrujillo]

Another Quick Solution:

*Go to Settings > Apps > ALL
*Find Google Play Services, Click and Clear Cache
*Find Google Play Store, Click and Clear Cache, Clear Data, Force Stop
*Startup the Play Store (You will have to re-do your settings, which is but one or two and pick your Default Google Account).
*Download a pretty big file (Maybe Terminal IDE, about 50Mb) to test it out.

 

[Leowaves]

Found a CONCRETE Solution to WIFI problem

After reading everybody's post on Internet, I concluded the problem is with Verizon Fios. They are throttling our speed when using Youtube or Play store from any Android device. I was able to prove this to myself after doing many tests using Nexus7, HTC one (purchased Sep 2013), iPad2 and iPhone5. At one point I even thought my silicone cover on my phone could be causing speed issues but it was not the case. iPhone never had a issue with wifi speed using youtube or Appstore

SOLUTION: Everybody has posted solution regarding dhcp address, restarting router, reinstalling play store app or clearing cache but my guess is these might not work for all or in the long term and you will end up hating your lovable Android phone. Here is what I did and I believe it will work for all of you guys. I had to encrypt the traffic from my phone so that Verizon does not understand the data and hence will not be able to throttle it. I use proxpn.com and get HD quality streaming speed over FIOS. I repeatedly tested this using their New York vpn server. When my vpn was turned on, I was able to download apps from play store at whatever speed the vpn server was giving me and that was approx 10-15mbps. Tested youtube and video's started playing after 2 or 3 seconds of clicking it unlike without vpn, youtube just wont load any video until 1 or 3 minutes. This will work for you.

This is a paid solution approach but guess what "it works". I got a vpn account with 20% discount for life .. who does not need a vpn in today's date? everytime u stop at star bucks or free wifi spot its always good to surf behind a vpn rather then without it. The most important reason is this approach allows me to stick to my fav Android phone and ditch the boring iPhone5. Cheers!

 

[kernmal]

I've been seeing slow downloads on multiple devices.
On Sprint, T-Mobile, and Charter.
It's been like that since Google "fixed" the invalid file package issue.
Although all of the Google apps updates seem to download normally.

Here is 25.35 MB app on T-Mobile (which is a little slower than normal tonight, but still...).
2 hours left???




Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Insane Homer]

I had this issue while trying to setup my brand new Nexus 5.

Play Store app downloads were very very slow (4-5Mb downloads taking 10-15 mins+), so the entire process of getting my apps onto my new phone was taking hours! If I switched Wifi off and went ot 3G the download speeds were very fast, back to Wifi and it was dial-up trickle speeds.

However, I found a 'solution' - while I had a bunch of apps queued for download I decided to create the offline cache in Google Maps of the greater London area (Done by typing 'OK Maps'). The second it started to download and cache the map area I noticed the Downloads in the Play Store started to finish in seconds as they should...

Weird but true!

I had the same problem with the set-up of my Wife's Nexus 5, the same trick also worked on hers.

 

[GTORYDR]

I'm using HP TouchPad with WebOS and have similar issues. Started when Google Play site was redesigned/re-released by Google. Guess its Google's problem with new design. So, how do we get in touch with them for answer? Any ideas?

 

[WORPSPEED]

Ridiculously slow speeds on my new Nexus 5 too.

While browsing the web is as speedier than on my Gnexus, the Gnexus is able to download apps from the Play store a few hundred times faster than my Nexus 5.
Tried Factory resetting, tried clearing cache and data, tried the DHCP method above, nothing seems to help.
And to make it weirder, from time to time it reaches normal download speeds for a few seconds, sometimes up to a few tens of seconds, but then immediately returns back to the slow-poke speed.

There is one thing though, I ordered my N5 from America and am using it in the Netherlands (I expected only the LTE bands to differ, but I don't use those (GSM network here) so I figured I'd be fine) So could this be causing issues? I very much doubt it, seeing as wifi is wifi, but thought I'd through it out there just to be sure.
Another thing is that I haven't put my SIM card in it yet (wanted to swap the SIM after I fixed the Wifi issues) so could that cause some problems?

Really need to know if it is a faulty model or a software problem.