Broadband speeds

IrishLuigi

I'm wondering if broadband speeds do not affect how fast you download images for viewing, as I've switched providers (from Be* to 02).

All speed test websites give me an upload of 1MB and download of 10MB, yet it takes VERY LONG for pictures to become fully available for viewing (the pictures are pixellated and get less pixellated, or extend to the full height) and .gifs are unviewable (I don't have the patience).

On my old provider, pictures downloaded more quickly and gifs were usually available in a matter of seconds.

Is there a third, perhaps external factor?

*And I'll have none of that talk with people boasting about their speeds being faster than mine

S7evin

Here is a pretty good page that lists all the things that can influence your speed.

Two other things I can think of are checking if there are any programs open that are hogging your bandwidth (e.g. torrent or other download or streaming programs) and scanning for viruses.

Good luck.

iPenguin

Sometimes unwanted programs run at start up, maybe one is hogging up bandwidth as stated above. Can look for these by doing

START > RUN > msconfig > Startup

Uncheck anything you don't need.

Fire-Fist

dns is one other factor. isp's default dns isn't always best choice

kmohyudin

@Fire-Fist:

dns is one other factor. isp's default dns isn't always best choice

I don't think DNS would affect picture load time though. I was under the impression that once you connect to the website, the job of DNS is over, after that the only factors that should matter are the speed of the server and your internet connections.

There is one thing I can think of, some ISP cache widely viewed websites for faster access… Maybe your old ISP used to do that? Even then image loading shouldn't take that long, I have a 4mb download speed, and image loading has never been a issue for me...

Flux

That link in the second post is an interesting read. I sometimes have trouble with
the same problem as Luigi if my net is having a 'slow day'. It's usually fine though.

IrishLuigi

Thanks to everyone! I cleared cache, cookies, changed DNS and everything else I could readily do, and the pictures seems to be working fine.

Fire-Fist

@kmohyudin:

I don't think DNS would affect picture load time though. I was under the impression that once you connect to the website, the job of DNS is over, after that the only factors that should matter are the speed of the server and your internet connections.

well if the images are hosted on different sites then its job wont be over. the initial time it takes to resolve imagehost's ip will add to delay.

kmohyudin

@Fire-Fist:

well if the images are hosted on different sites then its job wont be over. the initial time it takes to resolve imagehost's ip will add to delay.

Never thought about that… yeah you are right