John, As you no doubt are aware by now, there are so many variables that go into real-world speed of data transfers via the Internet that trying to definitively pin it on any one factor is very difficult without some pretty sophisticated tools.
Probably the most common reason for slow downloads is the speed of the data flowing from the source you're downloading from. It could be that lots of people are trying to access that same data at the same time and that's slowing it down. It could be that the bandwidth of the source computer is limited (if you tried to download anything from one of office computers over the Internet you would be limited to T1 speeds, since that's the speed of our connection to the outside world). And since data on the Internet travels a circuitous path through many servers, a slowdown on any one of those servers on the path can be the culprit. And it may that your own ISP, as you found in the case of Insight, is either having technical problems or is itself slowed by heavy access at a particular time in a particular area of town. And then there is the factor of your own equipment, your cable/DSL router, your wifi router, your own computer and the amount of RAM it has, the number of programs running, the space available on your hard disk for virtual memory, etc., etc. I have even run across the occasional faulty ethernet cable that will allow data to pass through, but at a much slower rate than normal. Which is why increasing one's potential local bandwidth is only sometimes going to result in a real-world dramatic increase in data transfer speed. Too many things have to go right at the same time for that to happen, and we all know what Murphy thinks about allowing that to happen. Dan > I harp on this a lot, but I am only trying to inform those that may face this > in the future. > > Last night I thought Firefox was going to be the solution for the 15-20 > seconds it would take a site to load under Safari. Nope, this morning > Firefox was having the same problem. > > I called Insight and the tech said he could see the problem it was on their > end, my signal strength was fluctuating wildly. They are going to place a > monitor on it to record until Friday then send someone out for the 4th time. > It had to be Friday for there are so few that know much about the 50. I am > tired of this, I would like to get it fixed for good. > > So it isn't the browser wars, it is Insight. > > John > > > _______________________________________________ > MacGroup mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup > > _______________________________________________ MacGroup mailing list [email protected] http://www.math.louisville.edu/mailman/listinfo/macgroup
