Why do some pages suddenly take a long time to load when just recently it went fast?
type: tip
reliability: 
- indeterminate*
understandability: - indeterminate*
time saving: - not applicable**
usefulness: - indeterminate*
difficulty: 
- very easy
required skill: 
- newbie
overall: 15 of 16 points,
1. Indicating activity
There is an easy way to tell. First, how long did it take to download this page completely [including the pictures below and Angelfire's ads]? Was it two seconds [for those who have high-speed connections], or was it about two minutes? Even with high-speed connections it varies so greatly. The big reason for the large variation is that sometimes your connection isn't responding for a short time. Here's a trick to monitor your connection to when it's loading and when it's not [Note: Because I've never seen a system with anything other than 56K dial-up this trick is completely untested on internet connections outside 56K dial-up].
If you go to the bottom right of the picture and to the left of the clock, you see two monitors. When these two monitors are both light-colored like this, [yours may look a little different, however] that means that there is communication and that your page is downloading constantly. Ever notice that when you click on a link, such as those at the bottom, the two monitors will light up? That's how you tell when there's activity. However, while reading this, you may notice that they are darkened:
This means that there is no transfer activity. If they remain like this, you may automatically get disconnected. Just make sure you keep the internet connection active [disconnects from inactivity is not known with internet connections outside dial-up].
This is a sample of which the computer you are connected to is only responding. If this one remains active only, you won't get the data needed, but it usually doesn't stay on like this that long. This is typical when you upload something.
This is another example, except this is when only your computer is responding and the one you are connecting to isn't. Like the above, this means that you are getting no data at all, but rather your computer is trying to send that data. If you click on a link, the first thing you'll notice is that your computer lights up first [the bottom one]. This is because your computer is sending the data to the server requesting the page or file you wanted to view or download.
Now you know why your connection takes various amounts of time to load the same page.
2. Sudden disconnects
Sometimes it's not your internet that's having problems, sometimes the server goes down. When this happens, only your computer would be responding as shown in the images above. It could also be that the ISP [the Internet Service Provider] is having routing problems, the domain doesn't exist [like if you were to type in "thisisjustsomeweirdandrandomURL.com" into your browser] or something. Sometimes it could be your phone line. What causes the sudden disconnects? This is due to these four known reasons:
- Your ISP has a set time limit that you can be connected. For me, it's six hours. After six hours, regardless of what's going on, you'll often get disconnected. Because I've never seen a system with anything other than 56K dial-up I don't know if this applies with those kinds of connections.
- Inactivity where you're not doing anything for extended time. Again, I don't know if this exists on non-dial-up systems.
- Trouble contacting the server often results in a disconnect in attempt to reconnect as if something on the server's end occured. Logics say that this can occur over a high-speed connection, both dial-up and otherwise.
- Your phone line is staticy and needs to be either replaced or fixed [I've had this once, and you get really bad speeds, and it is highly unstable]. Because I don't know the hardware for anything higher than dial-up, I don't know if this applies.
There are more reasons, but these are some that I've encountered and know most.
Footnotes:
* Because I've never seen a system that uses anything outside a standard 56K dial-up, the reliability is very low. Heh, even dial-up is expensive where I'm at: $30 a month [includes an extra phone line]! Just to double the speed, you pay $50 a month, about that of what you could get for a 1 Mbps speed. With the way things look, I may still never see a system running on an internet connection faster than dial-up even 2 years from now. Due to this, this tip only applies best to dial-up users and not recommended for anything else, unless the specifications are the same. The ratings are declared as "indeterminate" for this same reason.
** Because of the nature of an internet connection, this cannot be applied for time saving. It varies widely.
