Having Been On Dialup For The Last Few Days I Realized Just How Much..

[Lee]

The 'acceptable' standards of the adult internet have changed over the past few years.

I can remember a time when if a site page didnt load within 3 or 4 seconds on dialup you had a bad site now however, it would seem that broadband internet usage has definately become all to common place when designing our sites.

A good example of this was another popular resource site i recently visited, nothing special design wise by any means in fact, it used mostly HTML in the layout with a couple of buttons and banners on each page however, even on a 50.6k connection a single text heavy page took in excess of 2 minutes to load :eek:

Apart from the fact that i want instant gratification anyway irrespective of what its in regards to, i cant imagine being a surfer on the web today using dialup, it would literally make me smash my computer to bits it was so annoying.

Anyway just figured i would share my experience with dialup and needless to say, im hoping that i dont have to resort ot a dialup connection again anytime soon

Regards,

Lee

[Dawgy]

sad thing is... a lot of people are still on dialup.

i had a poll on one of my free sites a while back, and over 50% of people that answered it were using dialup.

that particular site took over a minute to load on 56k

[studpuppy]

Interesting observation indeed. This came out a lot in the survey we conducted. (I will release much of that data for you all next week).

The need for speed to create, upload sites has given many webmasters the idea that dsl or cable connections are the norm. However, the greatest majority of surfers in the world are still on dialup and have monitor configurations of 800x600 at 72 dpi. We as webmasters seem to forget this or overlook this in our designs. Creating heavy loading pages etc... With all the talk of tgps, for instance, I wonder why anyone would wait SO LONG for the pages to load.

Of course if you are running or designing a streaming video site, then you would expect most customers would be on a high-speed connection.

[Chilihost]

I know what you mean, that week or so when by broadband modem died out was absolute hell, every page including pages like bbc and newspapers took forever to load. But if you look at stats the majority of people that join paysites do so because they have the money available, which goes hand-in-hand with having a broadband connection. Where are most of your members normally from? English speaking, wealthy countries!

cheers,
Luke

[studpuppy]

Having money has nothing to do with whether someone has a broadband/dsl connection. Sometimes it just is a fact that the services are not available. I can not presently get broadband cable or dsl in my private residence. However it is available just 5 miles down the road where I have offices.

Also it depends a lot on the age of the surfer. Older individuals who just surf the net for some porn etc and have no interest in streaming videos, mpgs and other items that the younger crowd enjoy just don't think they need to spend the money for something they don't need or want.

You mention stats -- there is absolutely no way (unless the surfers computer is infected with some malicious browser helper object) for a surfer's internet connection speed or type to show up in your stats.

It is just plain and simple that the majority of all internet users worldwide do not have broadband connections or state of the art generation computers. Many are still surfing on those 486-Win95 systems.

[Chilihost]

studpuppy, excellent point, you are totally right. Thanks for thinking that through for us!


cheers,
Luke

[jIgG]

more CSS less graphics = faster page load
or at least that's the theory