In this guide we shall see what influences the speed on our Internet experience.

SPEED

One of the characteristics of the Internet (not much liked by surfers) is that it is very slow. That's why the WWW was sometimes called the World Wide Wait!

Why?

The answer is simple: Internet was not designed to handle the volume of information that circulates throught its network today. The other factor has to do with the connection that your county has to the rest of the world.

What can be done?

Surfing on the Internet can be a slow process, but there are ways to speed up website download times.
Speed in all this process depends on:

• The computer.
• The browser.
• The modem.
• The Internet Service Provider's modem.
• The size of the files.
• How busy the server is.
• The traffic on the Internet.

Different computers and browsers are generally not factors which make much difference in the download time of the pages. Any modern computer with sufficient RAM and space on the hard drive working with a good web browser should work satisfactorily. The browser can be setup in various ways to avoid spending unnecessary time downloading. (See tips)

The módem, on the contrary is fundamental. The standard via Dial-up today is a modem working at almost 57.600 bps (57 Kbps).

Note: This applies to Dial-up, if you are on Cablemodem, ADSL, wireless access, or connect through a network connection you may have a much faster and reliable connection.

If you have a good provider (ISP), you will not need to worry about what modem they have on their side. One common problem is that the phone connection to the ISP is busy when you try to connect. This happens when many of it's users are online and there are more users than available modems. (There is no modem available to answer your call)

The size of the file is the main factor in the transfer. A text file can take seconds to load while a full page with complex graphics and other multimedia elements can take a few minutes. Downloading a full software application can take hours via Dial-Up. This is directly related to the size of the file. If a text page takes up 5Kbytes while another with graphics takes up 150 Kbytes, you will wait 30 times more on the download of the second one.

If the server is very busy because many users are accessing that information at the same time, it won't be able to respond to your requests quickly. Servers are 'democratic' for they reply to all the requests they get at once by supplying fractions of the request in 'little packets' of information. One by one they send and in this way make a round which they begin again once they have sent to every user, and then supply another little packet of information until our request is complete.

If the Network (Internet) is very busy (remember there are peak times) it will also take time for communications and data transfer to take place.

Note: The next guide has tips related to speed.