 | Randy Johnston
has been involved in computing for over 25 years. In addition to being a top-rated and entertaining speaker presenting technology seminars worldwide for K2 Enterprises (www.k2e.com), he is also Executive Vice-President and Co-owner of Network Management Group, Inc., a full-service computer networking and service company. Randy recently published Technology Best Practices for Wiley Publishing. You may contact Randy by e-mail at randyj@nmgi.com, or by phone at (620) 664-6000. |
Computers & Software
2002-03-01 16:18:00
Website loading
Question: We have a cable modem at home for connecting to the Internet. Why is it that some sites take so long to load and others load much more quickly?
Answer: There are many factors that determine Internet site download speed. You have addressed one of them, connection speed, with your cable modem. What are the factors? Computer speed, including processor speed, RAM, the amount of disk caching available, virus checking, firewall software, and connection speed. Things outside of your control include ISP router congestion, Internet backbone and router congestion, the web site's line speed, and the server(s) at the web site.As you can see, there are other factors to consider when it comes to Internet speed than your connection speed alone. Loosely speaking, the Internet will be faster in the morning than it will be later in the day or in the evening. Why? Because there are so many more users on the Internet later in the day. When you realize that 25% of all Internet users in the world live in the state of California, all you have to do is think about when Californians would be using the Internet, and try to use it at other times.People who manage sites try to make sure that their site and communication lines are responsive to the demands that they see. It is actually fairly rare for a single site to have performance problems that aren't easily addressed with minor upgrades in technology. If you are on a very popular site during a very popular time frame, for example superbowl.com during the game or olympics.com during the biggest event of the Olympics, you would expect this site to be slow, but designers build these sites for the expected traffic load, and create many redundant servers to provide you the information you demand. If a site you use is often slow, inform the site administrator.Other factors beyond your control are Internet congestion. For example, your local ISP or cable modem provider may have oversubscribed their service, because they know on average that not all users will be on at the same time. For cable modems, everyone in a neighborhood shares the line speed, with the connections commonly concentrated in a wiring closet that shares the total speed (or bandwidth) of that closet with everyone else in the neighborhood. In the old days of local area networking, hubs were used to share Local Area Network (LAN) connections, much like old party line phones were shared. Today, switches give every one their own private line, and better performance, but very few cable companies have used switches in the neighborhood wiring closets. They have chosen hubs to control costs.Some factors that you can control include your CPU speed, memory, browser caching (buffer settings), and the type of software you have running while on the Internet. A new computer can often make web browsing significantly faster. Clearing your Internet cache can also make your performance significantly faster. The software you have loaded, like virus scanning or firewall software can significantly slow you down, but you would see this type of slowdown across all web sites. As ever, since you have a permanent connection to the Internet, make sure you have firewall protection.
