Is the Internet Getting Faster? - Comments Page 2

Bob: Yes it is amazing the speed increase.
At home with Charter we get 60+ Mbps. However at work, out in the boonies, we get 3 Mbps with a dish. We work within proximity of a National Lab with 2 super computers. The fiber line runs in front of our building, just need to figure out how to tap into it, quietly.

Verizon used to advertise 12mbps download DSL in this SE Pa. 2 years ago. Now hi-speed is 3mbps at max. Upload speed is .6mbps. So Faster?

The average speed here Northern New England is 3mbps you can get 8mbps for 60+ dollars a month and feel lucky if you can ever achieve getting that speed. Many places only have dialup

Re: The "stalled" circle animation used to indicate "server busy" condition. I recently switched to a fiber connection and experienced the same condition before and after the fiber switchover. The installing company first told me my modem was too old and may be dropping out randomly, selling me the fiber upgrade and a new modem in the process. When the problem persisted, a tech was assigned and actually found a problem. Modem drops. Investigation showed that the modem dropped 130 times in a thirty day period. Since the length of the drops varied, some auto resetting took place and sometimes it did not reset. The "circle" stops during these drops, and restarts if the drop resets successfully. My cause was caused by rotting and damaged copper wiring from my computer to the point to where the copper connected to the fiber, which is about a quarter mile away. I live in an older neighborhood and some of the wiring is approaching 100 years. I now have a connection which was hand picked by the tech using diagnostic equipment, but still retaining it's age until new copper can be run or replaced by fiber.

You guys live in Heaven I reckon, here in Australia, best I can get is around 6mbps. This is with Adsl2+ although fibre optic is coming, I am not holding my breath. All the Govt is doing is arguing about it, with not a lot happening. Some areas have it, but in my place only 17km from the CBD of Adelaide, it is not even shown in the planning stages.

Just this summer got connected to fiber optic services from a dial up I had struggled with for many years. What a fantastic improvement---also now have VoIP. My internet use has now become a whole new world for me.

Just checked speed with OOkla. Down 1.6Mbps; up 0.5. DSL The main difference from previous ISP is that this is more reliable. :(

@jbakerjonathan

The most common causes for extended "waiting" periods are:
1) The route between you and the target site. This can be checked using tracert from the command prompt. type "tracert" (without the quotes) followed by the site name. EG: tracert askbobrankin.com
This will give the connecting hops and how long it takes to reach one. What you would look for are those showing "Request timed out." Those are bottleneck relays.
2) The site's servers may be slow. This could be due to high traffic or just outdated servers.

Of course, there are other factors; such as poor page design, bad links to graphics or ads, or even hardware connection problems.

As Bob pointed out, the site's servers are the biggest problem. New servers have no visible ROI, so they are not a high priority.

No matter how fast the CPU, bus speed, cache/RAM, or Internet connection, all computers wait at the same speed.

Agree with the rural areas for sure. Windstream is my only choice in my area and Google is full of things about their service so I'll just leave it there. There should be a Rural Internet Service Act implemented just as in the past we had the Rural Electrification Act. The same complaints from the internet service suppliers as the electric companies gave. We don't have the money to supply electricity to the rural area. As someone else mentioned, with some areas having faster service the web sites add more videos and long scripts that they can handle. Just adds to the frustration for us with slower service. My joke is the kids in school that have homework to do can get theirs done while the Windstream kids are still just watching the little circle rotate. Forget about 4k TV's and other home management electronics with the slow service.