QA Forum

Question & Answer

We are discussing Surfing through Computers and the Internet
With Nathanael Boehm, Nan Bosler and DCITA

Question:
Why are some websites so slow?

Answer:
Nathanael - There are a couple of reasons websites may be slow, but the main reason is the size of the web pages that you have to download onto your computer in order to view them. Images, large photos, animations, audio and streaming music can take a while to download.

If you're on a dial-up connection, you'll probably be able to download around 5 kB (kilobytes) per second. Broadband allows you to download much more per second. In Australia an ADSL connection should allow around 30 kB per second.

Many guidelines say that website pages shouldn't be more than 70 Kb in size - which means it should only take a few seconds to download on a broadband connection, but photos and audio will increase the amount of data that needs to be downloaded. Photos will generally add around 50 - 300 kB per photo.

Also, if you are viewing several pages at once they will all be sharing the same bandwidth which will slow down your connection.

Other reasons for slowness may be the number of people using a particular website, or if the site is performing transactions - especially financial transactions which are typically secured with SSL technology that will slow things down as everything between your computer and the web server has to be encrypted to keep your personal information private.

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