On Jan 15, 2011, at 11:22 PM, John Robinson wrote:

> I can't say for sure but of late the 50 meg. download has some issues.  Each 
> time you use Speedtest.net indeed you are getting the 50 but when you go to a 
> site you sit there and wait and wait, then it loads.  I don't know if Insight 
> is having to choke it down to accommodate some sites or if there is some 
> other issue, I will call Monday but it is ridiculous the latency, even with 
> email.  Now the Google Finance site loads in an instant, I just loaded the 
> Lexus site and it was instant, Ford was instant, GM instant, Progressive 
> instant, Geico instant, Amazon waited for many seconds, Canon a small delay, 
> Dodge a slight delay.  Some of these are there as soon as you let off the 
> key, others have a slight hesitancy and some take forever.  

What DNS are you using? I have found that changing away from the Insight DNS to 
OpenDNS or the Google Public DNS makes a big difference. Another thing you 
could try is to add sites you always use to your local /etc/hosts file. That 
bypasses DNS entirely because your machine always looks there first.

But, there's not much you can do about the inherent latency of the Internet and 
the servers you talk to. That's why I don't think faster connections are such a 
big deal, unless you're running lots of computers or are constantly downloading 
mega-files from a really fast site.

There are a few drastic things you can do if you're sufficiently rabid for 
speed, and I've tried some them just to tinker. For example,  you can use your 
own caching DNS server or even a Squid proxy. They made a noticeable difference 
back in the halcyon dial-up days of yore, but stopped being so useful when 
broadband arrived.


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