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The key to faster browsing: Guide
Everyone's browsing experience is different, so someone may have a fast experience, while other people may have the slowest experience. This guide that I've written will help you get the most out of your browsing experience, and help you understand the causes of slow browsing.
1: Speed
The speed of your internet connection is the key to fast browsing. Since most pages today are content heavy, a fast connection will allow the content to obviously load faster, thus lessening the delay time it takes for your content to load. Today, speeds can range anywhere from 16.6kbps dial-up up to multi-gigabit connections through fiber. Unfortunately, the faster the speed ususally means the more the consumer has to pay for a bigger pipe. Today, you can get DSL ranging from speeds starting near 300kbps download on ADSL all the way up to 28Mbps+ on ADSL2+ and even Ethernet speeds over VDSL2. On cable, speeds can range from the same starting point as DSL to 300mbps on DOCSIS 3.0 systems. Satellite systems today can give you DSL speeds.
2: Latency
Besides speed, latency is also key to fast browsing. Latency is measured in milliseconds (ms) and can vary based on several factors, including network conjestion (the route from your computer, through your ISP to the destinatioon), and distance to the destination. In gaming, latency is key to playing, which is why if you want to game, almost always a dial-up connection and satellite don't cut it. Most DSL and Cable connections today can manage latency (pings) ranging from 8ms to 90ms to any location on a continent/country, and can manage latency to the other side of the world around 250-400ms. What does all of this have to do with web browsing? Well, when you request content off of the internet, especially pages heavy in images, videos or code, you have to make connections in order to retrieve the content. Like every image is equal to one connection that needs to be made. The lower the latency, along with the faster the internet speed, the faster your content can load up.
3: Routing
Because the internet does not take a straigh path to where the content is being called apon, it has to make several hops to different locations in order to reach the content. This often involves leaving your ISP's network to get to a site (as seen by a trace route). Often times, residential connections have more hops needed to reach content, and because of this, this can increase latency and lower speeds. Business connections, which often cost more, will usually have less hops, which will improve the speed and lower latency. What may take 35 hops on a residential connection from North America to Australia may take only 15-20 hops on a business line from North America to Australia. Also, sometimes a route may be down on the internet, so while on day a site may be working fast, the site may suddenly be taking longer time to conect, but this can also tie in with other factors as well such as conjestion and latency.
4: DNS
DNS is the primary way of machines finding their way to requested content from domain names to IPs. While DNS may be blamed for slow connection speeds and time outs, DNS follows a rule where as soon as a site's IP is resolved and reached successfully, you will no longer need to make DNS requests in order to reach the same site unless you close the browser or reboot due to a hosts file in your operating system. DNS is only accessed when you are first making contact with a new site or if a site were to ever change IPs. As with other sites, latency and conjestion, along with the speed of the DNS server can affect the speed of the initial connection to a new site. Choosing DNS servers that are close to you and that are fast, or setting up your own DNS cache on a LAN server or as a program will help alleviate slow DNS lookups.
5: Conjestion
Conjestion is the number one reason for slow speeds. Because conjestion can happen anywhere, whether on your connection/LAN, en-route to the destination or at the destination (i.e. lack of bandwidth, server overloaded), it can be very unpredictable in some cases. Conjestion will often occur during internet peak hours, which is at night mainly when everyone is online. www.dslreports.com has tools that will allow you to find points of possible conjestion from their servers to your connection.
Often times in heavilly popuated areas, the cable, DSL and wireless ISPs may have insufficient bandwidth available at the feed to cover the load, thus causing conjestion, and often times in extreme cases, ISPs may throttle (or cap) your speeds to save from upgrading the network to keep prices low. When it isn't an ISP issue, it could be a problem with your connection being overloaded. For example, heavy uploading on a connection will cause the speeds to drop quickly, especially on the download since connection "ACKS" are getting out slower. Because of this, latency can skyrocket, and it is common for TCP connections to get flaky, not so much UPD. Some setups for connections allow QoS (Quality of Service) settings that can improve the quality of the connection during heavy uploading by allowing ACKS to get out quicker by prioritizing packets, or by rate limiting (capping; throttling) the upstream connection to make room for overhead/ACKs.
Another reason for slowness can be a lack of bandwidth at the datacenter or a busy server. Often times on very busy sites who don't have enough servers or bandwidth at a datacenter, servers can become overloaded with data requests, preventing the site from working as fast as the server's hard drives and memory try to fetch data, or as a line is conjested with data (the case with busy download sites like FileFront).
6: Processing and NAT
While it may not be a bandwidth issue, processing speed of your computer/system along with any routers/core routers/servers on route to the destination will affect everything from latency, to speeds. Also, the size of a NAT table on a router can cause problems as well. The NAT problem won't affect core routers at all, but it will have some effects on low-grade consumer routers (the cheap ones). For processing, having a slow processor in your computer can cause slow rendering times, and as your processor is used more, it will slow down the loading speed of pages. Also, having a slow router will cause slow routing to the internet. For the NAT Table, the NAT Table is more or less a connection bank that allows routing equipment to keep connections. When this bank becomes full, there is no more room for connections, and often times, routers will lock up or crash when this becomes full. Most consumer grade routers can only handle about 300 connections, while more expensive routers can handle thousands of connections. BitTorrent and other P2P apps that make hundreds of connections are known to wreak havoc on the NAT Tables, but they can be limited on connections.
7: Content
The content of a site may also slow your browsing experience with everything else above tied in together. Sites that consist of flash/java or are heavy in images, ads or other content (such as CSS)will take longer to load than sites that are only consisted of few images and no ads. To filter out things like ads, many consumer security suites come with built-in ad blocking and pop-up/pop-under blockers. Mozilla Firefox, an alternative to other browsers like Internet Explorer or Safari also has extensions like Adblock, no-script and others that can block bad content, and extensions for Firefox are free as well to download and use as well, and are small enough to be downloaded with a dial-up modem.
8: Browser
Every browser out there has their fast and slow points. For example, while Internet Explorer might be faster at loading pages with text, it may be slower loading pages with CSS or Dynamic content/AJAX content than a browser like Firefox, while Firefox may be slower at loading pages of text on slower systems, but can fly through dynamic pages, CSS and AJAX pages.
9: ISP Capping/Throttling
Some ISPs may, for some reason cap or throttle your connection based on things such as an AUP. Capping is common almonst some ISPs, including Comcast, WildBlue, HuguesNet, Roger's, Telestra, Bell Simpatico, Cox, and more. Many times, ISPs who cap will lower your speeds to dial-up speeds for a set amount of time. Also, many ISPs target programs like P2P apps and throttle them, which can lead to the entire connection being throttled.
I hope my guide helped. If I missed something, I apologize for it.
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