Page Load Size? [Archive]

Cristal7

12-11-2006, 10:47 PM

About 89% of our visitor have dsl or better. My question is this
Should I continue with the old 50 kbs per page load rule? Or has the rule changed?
Does anyone know what the new acceptable page load is?
OK, that was 3 questions...

Webnauts

12-11-2006, 11:30 PM

Today max. 100kbs. I would suggest to keep them as lower as possible though. There are millions of users all over the world who are still using 56K modems and ISDN.

Azam

12-12-2006, 03:18 PM

amycrawford

12-12-2006, 03:23 PM

Haze

12-12-2006, 03:48 PM

Just wanted to add my two cents: I live in a rural area and I'm not able to get high-speed access at my home unless I want to pay for satellite, which I choose not to do. I can afford stuff, and often do my "power surfing" at work, so don't write off all 56K modem users as broke!

True! Its the same situation here in southern Spain. Millions of people is living in luxury villas on the mountain hills along the coastline. I have clients using laptops from late 1900 and at the same time drives Ferraris and BIG boats. Fast computers are mostly used by kids playing games, not nessesarly good clients.
So.. you never know what's out there, having money is not the same as having a fast connection.

pemburung

12-12-2006, 03:48 PM

I'm with Amy - we're also in the country and can't get DSL via phone or cable (there's no cable either). Nothing more annoying than clicking on a website which is fundamentally not accessible unless you have DSL. What huge pages do you need to download to sell your product? Are you doing enough business that you can ignore 11% of your customers? If someone came along with a plan that guaranteed an increase of 11% in traffic for no cost would you take it? I'm sure you would. After all, you did say that you get 11% via non-DSL. What sales loss do you think your smaller pages are causing? What increase in sales do you think big pages will cause? Not sure about the UK, Azam, but here in the US there's a lot of pretty well-off people living on acreage in the country. They're not poor, just don't want to spend an exhorbitant amount for satellite access. I sell $US10,000 to $US18,000 product to them all the time. And do so from a place with no DSL. But I can tell you this. There are any number of potential suppliers who could be sharing in my business who are not because I can't access their websites in a reasonable time. I've yet to see a sale made by a fancy flash movie - there's a reason why most sites have a "skip" button. But those that don't - sorry, no sales from, or via, me.

blitzen

12-12-2006, 03:52 PM

It may sound harsh, but if somebody can't afford even basic DSL then it is highly unlikely they can afford to buy products online.

On what in heaven's name did you base that opinion? Over 50% of users in the US are on modem! I just got high-speed last month (we're remote and a wireless provider recently moved in).

Page-load time depends highly on your market only if you sell extremely high-end items, like Avantis. Even then, there is no guarantee they will be on high-speed networks.

Otherwise, do some research before expression your lone opinion.

Last June, JupiterResearch (www.jupiterresearch.com) reported statistics on why customers abandon their shopping carts. Look at page 14 -
44% of shoppers are on dial-up.

The take-home lesson is to make your pages load as fast as possible and have a flawless site. Forget the bells and whistles. Put them in a separate section of your website.
http://www.akamai.com/dl/reports/Site_Abandonment_Final_Report.pdf

littlegiant

12-12-2006, 04:12 PM

I've always been a big supporter of keeping in touch with dialup users but I've also always been under the impression that broadband users were a clear majority among US internet users.

This story pegs broadband usage in the US at 68% in March 2006
http://www.physorg.com/news11757.html

This site says broadband penetration among US users was at 76% in October 2006
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0611/

(edit)

I'd also like to add that I just got high-speed recently (a few months ago) so the dialup experience is still fresh in my mind and IMHO, most sites on the net simply don't care about page weight anymore. Using dialup on the internet as recentlly as last summer was a horribly frustrating experience. I was in a debate on another forum about this recently and I was basically ridiculed off the screen for extolling the virtues of remaining loyal to narrowband users.

dean

12-12-2006, 04:14 PM

There is no logical connection between whether someone has DSL and whether they can afford it. My basic DSL actually costs less than my dial-up used to cost. When I first tried to switch, it wasn't available and I live in a major city.

blitzen

12-12-2006, 04:39 PM

This story pegs broadband usage in the US at 68% in March 2006
http://www.physorg.com/news11757.html

This site says broadband penetration among US users was at 76% in October 2006
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0611/

Hum ...
JupiterResearch reported stats for consumers who are buying online. 44% on Internet consumers are on dial-up.

Nielsen reported that "Narrowband users connecting at 56Kbps or less now comprise 23.4% of [total] active Internet users."

Assuming that both reports are pretty near reality, these two reports suggests that per capita, more dial-up users tend to purchase online.

I'm keeping my page load times down for the dial-ups.

littlegiant

12-12-2006, 04:52 PM

Yeah I noticed that as well, Blitzen, and I most certainly wasn't attempting to discredit the stats you cited. It's just that not everyone makes web pages for online shoppers.

pemburung

12-12-2006, 04:53 PM

The quoted stats indicated that DSL penetration is slowing, and almost flattening out at about 80%. That leaves 20% on dial-up for shopping (assuming businesses continue to restrict non-business access). I'm not sure of the exact figure, but at 18 subscribers per 100 inhabitiants, an overall internet penetration of about 60% of the population seems roughly right. In the US, that's 180 million. 20% of that is 36 million without DSL access. That's larger than the market in entire countries, eg nearly twice the market as Australia, and larger than Canada. Seems like a nice sized market to me. Plenty of people were making a nice living in two Australias or one Canada selling stuff before there was an internet. Still easier to go slowly on line to buy something than drive to a mall, or to the next state.

TrafficProducer

12-12-2006, 04:58 PM

About 89% of our visitor

100%-89%=11%, Can you afford to lose this level of possible sales?

OK, they may not be buying!! but they may tell someone about your site, if they can load it, and they could buy.

Most major Bricks and Mortar Supermarkets are said to only have about 3% sales above their competitors, if they lost 11% then they would go out of business.

Search engings like faster loading pages as well.

martindow

12-12-2006, 05:13 PM

I tend to agree with the general opinion. There has to be a very good reason to cut out 1 person in 9. What were you contemplating doing that would increase the size of your pages? Unless it is really valuable why risk losing potential customers and increasing the load on your server?

krisidious

12-12-2006, 05:25 PM

my page is 110kb now I think...

whooo but with things like youtube.com and such... the speed of the net is increasing and making your site a little hard to load makes people want faster connections, it drives the market... keep pushing the cheap bastages

I chose to make my page show a little bit right off the start so they don't get a blank page, but they know something is downloading...

my site is graphic intense... I chose not to cater to the size mongers... I try and keep it as small as I can but I will not let size worries guide my design...

bigaussie

12-12-2006, 05:31 PM

You have to be VERY careful when reading stats - especially when they start quoting with blanket statements like DSL penetration.

In Australia there are many ISPs providing "entry level" DSL starting at 256k which may as well be ISDN speed; sometimes slower. That type of speed makes a joke of the penetration levels in Oz. I know of many users with this speed, and they will stay with that speed while ISPs only charge $9.95 per month (small print...for 200Mb).

We still aim at sub 80k per page load. Many of our clients still get comments from their visitors about how quickly their website loads; and how pleasant it is to use.

KeeKee

12-12-2006, 06:30 PM

I do all my Christmas shopping online researh products and prices but even though I am on low end DSL now I still hate sites that take several seconds to load, I'm there to see a product or gain information if I want to watch a presentation then have it clickable.

The slightly more afluent neighborhood across from my subdivision cannot get DSL.

craigmn3

12-12-2006, 06:58 PM

I am always amazed when I design a page I think is awesom and it comes out to be 300kb or bigger. I don't know what it is in me that things I have to have 150kb Logo.......it's just in me.

Then I take a breath and downsize...and again I am amazed because the sight looks just as good.

so I think about it and come up with several reasons for keeping it small.

1. Don't anger the Dial Up people.
2. Don't Kill Yourself with the Search Engines
3. Save Your bandwidth (okay maybe not a big deal for some)
4 Be navigation friendly.

A note on the last one....if I I am looking for brass covered snoods. That's what I am looking for...I hate having to pile through a page to find the one 8pt link that will lead me where I want to go.

Break up your big pages into smaller ones. You Get more content (seo+) and happier viewers

hive.net.au

12-12-2006, 07:16 PM

In Australia 47% of the connected population of 6 million Australians still only have access to dial-up. Our business in based in a city of 500,000 people we live within the city and have only had access to broadband technology for the last 14 months. Our government and telco's have been slow to implement and realize the need for fast broadband. The other major factor in Australia more then half those connect to broadband in Australia have a connection speed of less then 512k. So don't forget the dial up users yet, even in developed countries.

PumaSpirit

12-12-2006, 09:24 PM

Why would anybody in their right mind volunteer to give up 11% of their leads?

What would it cost you to replace them with leads that only have fast access, if that is even possible?

What would it cost you to lose the 11%?

It's simple math to me. So, don't fix anything that isn't broken : )

As mentioned in several posts above, too many people simply don't have access to faster speeds, but have the money to spend. I personally know some myself.

Webnauts

12-12-2006, 10:34 PM

As you all might know here, I am the Web Accessibility & Usability Expert here at WPW, and I have suggested the time I became a member, that we need a forum like this, and I would moderate it.

But as you might have recognized, this forum is pretty quiet, but after all I see something is going on now!

I hope we can keep this busy as other forums here too, as these are very important for our businesses too.

As I see we all agree that about 11% of users are with 56K modems connections, and it is obvious we would not like to exclude them of buying our products.

Did you also know that not making our site accessible, we exclude another 10% of users?

Which ones? People with disabilities. The WHO (World Health Organization) estimates that 10% of the earth population are people with diverse disabilities.

And these people some times need the Internet more than anybody else. Have a look at my article about this issue: http://www.webnauts.net/accessibility.html

So, do we have now 21% to think about?

Another issue. Did you know the new Google Accessible Search? Is your site optimized for that?

Have a look at our article we recently published on one of our web sites: http://www.seoworkers.com/seo-articles-tutorials/accessible-search.html

I guess that is all I would like to say at the moment. And you can be sure that I would be very glad if I can help you all making your sites more accessible and usable. :)

Last word: For what do we need for example SEO, if our site can be found by search engines, but is not accessible and usable for our visitors?

Think about it. :)

krisidious

12-12-2006, 10:42 PM

I beleive that webnaut offers accessibility testing on his website by real person...

for those of you on the cheap Front Page does accessibility testing within the software... as to how effective it is, I don't know... ask the webnaut...

it used to be, back in the day that we could have a doorway page, one that gave users a choice of site we offered, one accessible one highspeed one low speed and soo on...

now we're punished for it...

just for quips... I had a friend in college that had glacoma, he had a 14" monitor and he had one letter on the screen at a time, no not one word... one letter... try serving him a 100kb webpage

Orion

12-12-2006, 11:07 PM

Another issue....

In the USA you are LEGALLY required to make your site ACCESSIBLE to everyone (site Bill 508??? and the recent case which Target Stores lost).

If you want a professional site and to not alienate (in North America it's not as many as the rest of he world granted) any %age of your potential clients you really need to offer an accessible quick-loading site but that doesn't mean you can't offer a richer, higher bandwidth experience for those on highspeed that want it.

We have a 6MBs cable connection here... I download between 300 and 600KB/s yet still OFTEN opt for the lower bandwidth options on sites.

Cristal7

12-12-2006, 11:15 PM

pemburung said:
What huge pages do you need to download to sell your product?

Actually, I'm selling advertising to local companies, and the one major complaint I get is that the graphics are fuzzy. So we've tried increasing the quality of the images, but this has pushed our page load up to 230kb (on the home page)!! I ran the test here http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ and was really surprised that I had let it creep so high!

Then I checked some similar sites scores, Sacbee.com came in at 330kbs, and Richmond.com was a whopping 600kbs.

So, needless to say, after all of your input we're implementing a major redesign to decrease page load and make the site more informative ("thank you" to those that reviewed my site).

Any more thoughts on the matter? One of the trains of thought that I had regarding the dial up users, was not that I didn't want thier visits, but have they become accustomed to waiting longer? Are they more forgiving of larger sites?

Btw... there is some very good information about making your site disability compliant in the US at http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm

krisidious

12-13-2006, 12:02 AM

"In the USA you are LEGALLY required to make your site ACCESSIBLE to everyone (site Bill 508??? and the recent case which Target Stores lost). "

wow who does this apply to?

"What huge pages do you need to download to sell your product?"

my pages are huge, I use a large graphic to sell my product... hell my product is a huge graphic..

I make them huge and I still get tons of complaints that they can't read them...

I have never gotten a complaint about accessibility

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 01:46 AM

for those of you on the cheap Front Page does accessibility testing within the software... as to how effective it is, I don't know... ask the webnaut...
I recommend everyone to avoid using Frontpage for any purpose in general.

it used to be, back in the day that we could have a doorway page, one that gave users a choice of site we offered, one accessible one highspeed one low speed and soo on...

now we're punished for it...
You cannot blame accessibility for that. You should blame the one who did not exclude that doorway using the meta tag for "noindex" or not disallowed in the robots.txt.

just for quips... I had a friend in college that had glacoma, he had a 14" monitor and he had one letter on the screen at a time, no not one word... one letter... try serving him a 100kb webpage
Isn't that horrible?

krisidious

12-13-2006, 02:13 AM

hey now.... don't knock frontpage... it's a great tool that makes life a lot easier for many of us...

have you even used newer frontpage software to build and maintain an entire site? or are you spouting the rhetoric everyone spouts about MS, that doesn't use their software?

and I can't really come up with many things it does bad... except for not liking other non microsoft apps...

I was not blaming accessibility for the doorway thing... nothing to do with that at all... over zealous SEO freaks... and over protective Serps.. to blame for that... but how would a no follow help? it's still a doorway page... just because you tell it not to follow a link, it's still on your domain and still see's the link it has right?

anyone know what's up with this link on WPW on the left most recent menu?

and yes it was horrible for my friend... he couldn't drive, he couldn't go to the store... he could barely walk down the hall... but some how being blind as a bat and still reading everything and doing his school work he maintained dean's list in college... let's hear you gripe about homework now kids...

from what I saw in my accessibility test through FP it was huge...

my home page which passes W3C 4.0 html
had 82 problems in the 1 page...
I have well over 550 pages... eeeekkk

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 02:31 AM

hey now.... don't knock frontpage... it's a great tool that makes life a lot easier for many of us...

and I can't really come up with many things it does bad... except for not liking other non microsoft apps...

Do you want to say here that Frontpage creates web sites with valid code? Like Dreamweaver or NVU?

I was not blaming accessibility for the doorway thing... nothing to do with that at all...
Great!!!

and over protective Serps.. to blame for that... but how would a no follow help? it's still a doorway page... just because you tell it not to follow a link, it's still on your domain and still see's the link it has right?
Or you are kidding me or did you not read my post?
I said using the robots meta tag "noindex" or disallow in the robots.txt. Got it?

and yes it was horrible for my friend... he couldn't drive, he couldn't go to the store... he could barely walk down the hall... but some how being blind as a bat and still reading everything and doing his school work he maintained dean's list in college... let's hear you gripe about homework now kids...
Well then you understand more than others how important accessibility is. :)

from what I saw in my accessibility test through FP it was huge...

my home page which passes W3C 4.0 html
had 82 problems in the 1 page...
I have well over 550 pages... eeeekkk
I thought that Frontpage is an excellent tool. And produces so much crappy code? To be honest I don't get that. Or did I miss something?

krisidious

12-13-2006, 02:40 AM

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 02:43 AM

webnaut you need quit being so defensive... the word is English and it's Zealous... look it up not Jealous... and I didn't say you... I said SEO Freaks.. meaning people who go overboard with the serps
Sorry for the misunderstanding.

and stop quoting me soo much...
I will quote so much I want, and when I want.

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 02:48 AM

nVu and DW both make just as many errors... you need to be honest and tell every one you have never used frontpage to run and maintain a website...

I have a friend who is using Frontpage, and he created this site: http://www.christian-healing-prayer.net

He had the same template for another site which a member of my team redesigned for him: http://www.healing-prayer.net - Can you see the difference? I mean the code?

krisidious

12-13-2006, 02:50 AM

that first link is dead, so no I can't see the difference

krisidious

12-13-2006, 02:52 AM

ok I found it, it's .net

ok the FP site is much clearer graphic text wise,

the FP site the code is much easier to read because of the old style HTML spacing...

the FP page has one html error on it...

the new site redesign passes W3C

both sites are FF and IE friendly

the only difference I see is that it took a pro to do one and a novice to do the other...

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 03:00 AM

that first link is dead, so no I can't see the difference
Cool man. I just corrected it! :)

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 03:08 AM

the only difference I see is that it took a pro to do one and a novice to do the other...
The difference you might have not seen, is that the redesign was written in a normal text editor, has 100% valid XHTML Strict 1.0 and CSS 2.0, and that the site meets the highest accessibility requirements W3C/WAI WCAG AAA.

And if you look around on the web what web sites are created by pros, I think you will see a huge difference to this one. :)

krisidious

12-13-2006, 03:14 AM

as I am not a pro... I probbaly wouldn't notice...

but not all of us are pro's at html...

so we need things like FP...

and I spent years typing code in notepad... thats like riding a horse to work... in todays age it shouldnt be needed... we have cars on the road and we have HTML editors that allow you to see the site as you build it... when you put a puzzel together how would you like using just the outlines of the pieces, and no picture? same principle...

I'm not knoocking you pure guys and the notepad thing... but jeez who has the time?

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 03:23 AM

You are right Kristoff. I just had luck that when I was visiting in the year 2000 an academy to become a Specialist in Multimedia Office Communication, I refused using Dreamweaver 3.0 (LOL), for setting up my Certification Project. And I do not regret that, and I still do not do so until today, as I have full control over my code, and therefore I save a lot more time than if I use a WYSIWYG editor.

People don't get it, that writing code per hand can can save a lot of time and have better results. But I can understand that, if they did not have my experience. :)

krisidious

12-13-2006, 03:27 AM

yeah you people that type code like it's a term paper due in an hour... I just can't figure you people out...

but I suppose it get's easier and easier for you...

and of course you're right you get total control...

the biggest problem I get is FP inserting un-needed tags... every page I make will have 1 or 2 that are uneeded or unrecognized...

we should probaly get back to fixing this guys issues... lol

krisidious

12-13-2006, 03:29 AM

I wanted to point out... that in FP you can write in their code box and use a nice TAG drop downs to insert them... and we all know that MS made Notepad so you're actually using Microsoft to build your pages if you use notepad...

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 03:38 AM

Don't get me wrong Kristoff. I am not against Microsoft. I sure do not use Internet Explorer, (only for testing my work), but I am on Windows XP. LOL

And I do not use Notepad. I use HTML Kit (http://www.chami.com).

rbirdsall569

12-13-2006, 03:51 AM

Any more thoughts on the matter? One of the trains of thought that I had regarding the dial up users, was not that I didn't want thier visits, but have they become accustomed to waiting longer? Are they more forgiving of larger sites?

I also live in an area where high speed access is not available. Have I become accustomed to waiting longer? No. Unless I am going to a site that I know has useful information (Web Pro World), or a site that I need to go to to pay a bill (Allstate -- I hate their site) if I have to wait for more than 30 seconds (and that is stretching it) I'm gone. When I'm doing research I will wait longer but for shopping -- I won't do it. There are always other options and there is going to be a site out there somewhere that hasn't forgotten the dial up users.

In the past 5 years I have done more Christmas shopping on the internet each year, until this year. I haven't even bothered to look this year. I have noticed over the last few years that sites are getting bigger. It is now a waste of my time to shop online.

I design sites -- primarily as a hobby, and I follow the under 50k rule.

There's my penny's worth.

rbirdsall569

12-13-2006, 04:13 AM

I spent years typing code in notepad... thats like riding a horse to work... in todays age it shouldnt be needed... we have cars on the road and we have HTML editors that allow you to see the site as you build it... when you put a puzzel together how would you like using just the outlines of the pieces, and no picture? same principle...

I prefer to hand code everything myself, and it really isn't that hard to see how things are coming along by reloading your page in a browser every few minutes.

I started out coding in Notetab in 1999, then went to Note Tab Lite not long after that. I made the mistake in 2001 of buying a cheap WYSIWYG program, which provided code about the same as the Front Page of the day. It saved me a lot of time in building a online store (no longer in exsistance) but when I decided to clean up the site I lost all that time and more. I have gone back to hand coding with Note Tab Pro now and haven't looked back.

buster

12-13-2006, 05:35 AM

If a page is very large and takes a long time to download it doesn't stop it being accessible - just slow. This is not the same as being unusable to blind people etc, it is purely a speed issue.

pemburung

12-13-2006, 09:19 AM

Crystal17 there are a number of ways to have an image load first in low res then be cickable to reload as high res for those that want this; this will allow users to view a cleaner image. You can also cut them up. If there is text to read while waiting for images to load, and the user can see them loading, they'll more likely wait. Having said that, if you are purely b2b then it may not be an issue at all.

edhan

12-13-2006, 11:03 AM

Yes, I do agree that we should try to keep our site at a low Kb so it can also cater for dial-up users. Having numerous graphic display on my site, some time it is a little hard but then I will try to optimise it using gif or jpg to reduce the Kb. I can understand the frustration of loading a page with 56Kbps modem as I had that before. I do believe that designing a site should cater for all audiences as far as possible since internet is a place where we can acquire information and knowledge.

DrTandem1

12-13-2006, 11:11 AM

Yes, I agree you don't want to alienate any of your potential customers, let alone 11% . Furthermore, there are many flavors of broadband. Cable, which loves to say they are faster than DSL, have been sued for providing speeds that were equivalent to dial up. The reason for that is cable guarantees a maximum speed, while DSL guarantees a minimum speed. Cable will rarely give you their advertised top speed. Sure, cable will give you 10 meg, if all the other users in your node are dead.

Now, fast is fast. There really isn't much noticeable difference for the average web surfer between 1.5 meg and 6 meg. The bigger the file size of your site, the longer it will take to load. All things being equal, the leaner site wins.

Another thing that many clients don't realize is their huge file size of their site appears to load quickly because they are actually viewing their cache, not the loading of the site. How many times have you had to tell your clients to reload their page to see a change? This was especially true of AOL subscribers where AOL also used its own cached version of the page. There is the quick and there is the dead.

By the way, Target did not lose the accessibility battle. All that happened is that it will go to trial, if they don't settle out of court. This is nothing but a shakedown like the disabled California lawyer that sues businesses that no disabled person ever visited for minor violations of the ADA codes:

http://www.chs-law.com/2006/10/san-diego-ada-lawyer-strikes-again.html

krisidious

12-13-2006, 01:16 PM

Don't forget Interlaced Graphics that load and show something... the cutting images into smaller pieces in good... I think is someone sees the page is loading they'll give you a chance... as in seeing graphics streaming downward, or CSS text loading up...

if you explain to them why your page is big they may give you a chance too...

well I'm in Misery or Miissouri, USA for those non-Americans.. I'm about a mile from an Internet Backbone Line... Interstate I44... so I get great speeds across the country... on my DSL

I just can't bring myself to trim my page down... I have 50kb in graphics on my home page... and then well the objects and the text and the java... eeee
110kb

did you guys see the Experiment they did in one of these forums with the depth of the serps spiders searching? MSN 1 Meg first page Google 600KB Yahoo like 400kb they seem to want to know what you have even if it's big... maybe someone could put the link up for me...

Webnaut is always good for pointing out affordable software... I have never heard of the HTML Tool Kit, but I'll give it a look

Webnauts

12-13-2006, 01:24 PM

... maybe someone could put the link up for me...
Do you mean this? http://www.sitepoint.com/article/indexing-limits-where-bots-stop

krisidious

12-13-2006, 01:38 PM

BINGO Webnaut... thanks...

I know this is not the thread for this, but... do we have a section on WPW that we could put all of these "Experiments" I have seen lots of these on WPW they're very interesting... and they're not really opinion but results based...

just an idea...

Cristal7

12-13-2006, 02:06 PM

Don't forget Interlaced Graphics that load and show something...

Thanks for the idea, I will try that.

PumaSpirit

12-13-2006, 02:15 PM

nVu and DW both make just as many errors... you need to be honest and tell every one you have never used frontpage to run and maintain a website...

I made a page with Nvu the other night and it failed W3C and I own dreamweaver and it, well I don't like it

I agree. I also tried Nvu and dreamweaver (and others) and didn't like either. I ended up using FrontPage to create and maintain sites. Because it's easy, it's fast. It's a good program for anyone to use who does not write code or does it only withing limits, such as people like me.

If you are good at code, guess what... Frontpage allows you to do that.

Nobody is good at everything, MS included. Why bash them for shortcomings we all have collectively?

DrTandem1

12-13-2006, 02:51 PM

To be blunt, FrontPage sucks. It produces invalid code. No, I can honestly say I have never maintained nor built a web site using FrontPage. However, I have fixed a gazillion sites that were originally made with FrontPage.

FrontPage may be easy to use, but it does not produce results worth having.

Cristal7

12-13-2006, 03:10 PM

Don't forget Interlaced Graphics that load and show something...

Actually interlacing increased the page load.

krisidious

12-13-2006, 03:13 PM

well my page was produced with it and when it was done it had 1 Error in it...

what people do with a car does not mean the manufactureer messed it up or that the car is at fault...

the fact is it tends to be the easiest form of editor so the very novice are it's main users... which makes for more errors..

we shouldn't knock things we haven't tested ourselves... in their entirety...

but then again this is not the "let's knock Microsoft Thread"...

DrTandem1

12-13-2006, 03:22 PM

Okay, back to page-load. I would aim for 50k as a file size. That is just a loose benchmark. I would say the extreme would be approaching 75k. I'm talking about e-commerce here, so there will be exceptions. File size will have little impact on SERP rankings.

My own site is a bit over 50k, but it's not e-commerce. I have designed e-commerce sites with one under 25k that is very successful in both the SERPs and its on-line sales.

My own experience has shown me that the lower the file size, the more successful the site is. I think it is the fact that the leaner sites load faster and people buying on the internet have little patience. Also, I saw a scientific poll that said Americans in general are very impatient.

Orion

12-13-2006, 03:25 PM

I have been teaching both Dreamweaver and FP to highschool and colleges and adults for almost 10 years now.

really basics (give you a one hour overview) anyone can use FP for some simple stuff.

give me 4 hours and I have NEVER had 1 student (out of thousands) say that FP is easier.. it is a really really convoluted and confusing piece of software. It's not laid out logically and doesn't work the way stuff should.

MS does have a tool that rivals dreamweaver it's called Visual Studio, works great codes well.

Not saying you can't make good code in FP but It takes on average about 1.5x longer to do it than it does in DW or other software that defaults to that.

If you are making a site for a business though you really need to pay attention to the new WAI and AAA and (I can't keep track of all the acronyms...) lol.. but they are important, front page doesn't support them, and until MS releases a newer product that at least codes to specs that have come out in the last 4 years (last release was 2003) I wouldn't count on it for a corporate or business site.

deepsand

12-13-2006, 08:28 PM

I wouldn't focus on 56k modem users. It may sound harsh, but if somebody can't afford even basic DSL then it is highly unlikely they can afford to buy products online.

Every business needs to focus on making money and the money is more likely to be with DSL users than 56k modem users.

Typical modem speeds are going up by the month, so I don't see the point is catering for the typical modem speed of 5 years ago.

You cannot buy what's not available.

Broadband has yet to make significant penetration outside metro areas, as the Tier 1 & 2 players find it to be not sufficiently profitable. In the U.S., broadband usages has yet to reach 50%, whether measured by households or adult population.

As for "Typical modem speeds ... going up by the month," such is neither happening nor physically possible using the currently available modulation methodologies and the FCC's cap on power limits on POTs lines.

Ignore those without broadband at your own peril.

deepsand

12-13-2006, 08:37 PM

Another issue....

In the USA you are LEGALLY required to make your site ACCESSIBLE to everyone (site Bill 508??? and the recent case which Target Stores lost).

<snip>

Incorrect.

There are those who contend that web sites should conform to the ADA; in fact, the ADA specifically addresses physical places, [b]not logical[/i] ones.

This specious contention is only now being introduced in the the courts, by those with their own particularly narrow agenda, and will, I predict, be ultimately rejected.

krisidious

12-13-2006, 08:51 PM

deepsand

12-13-2006, 10:09 PM

so say a 56k user comes to my large site...

if they stay long enough to download the 100kb of website... then are they not done downloading those files if you use a template? I think so in most cases... so what ever new content you have on each page thereafter are what they contend with...

(on my site I have it worse because I force larger and larger graphics on the user at each level of the website...)

so anyway... if the user has already downloaded the navigation and such then... faster and faster... right?

That depends on a number of factors, including the OS and browser being used, whether or not they're using a proxy server, the time-to-live on the pages transmitted by your server, the time-to-live as modified by any intervening proxy, whether or not times-to-live are used or ignored, the amount of disk space allocated for temporary files, etal..

There's no single "right" answer to your question.

As re. graphics, always select a file format that uses the greatest amount of compression, i.e. the smallest number of bits per image, that will suffice for the average monitor.

edhan

12-13-2006, 10:24 PM

That depends on a number of factors, including the OS and browser being used, whether or not they're using a proxy server, the time-to-live on the pages transmitted by your server, the time-to-live as modified by any intervening proxy, whether or not times-to-live are used or ignored, the amount of disk space allocated for temporary files, etal..

There's no single "right" answer to your question.

As re. graphics, always select a file format that uses the greatest amount of compression, i.e. the smallest number of bits per image, that will suffice for the average monitor.

Yes, you are right. Too many factors affecting the result of display the site.

Also not forgetting that for internet connection, it depends on the quality of the line and the numbers of hops it has to go through before reaching the site. When you do a tracert google.com, you can see how many hops before it can reach. But if there is a problem in between those hops (shows by *) then you will end up 'unable to connection to server' or having delay showing up the site page.

krisidious

12-13-2006, 10:38 PM

Don't forget Interlaced Graphics that load and show something...

Actually interlacing increased the page load.

yes it does... but it also allows the user to see a fuzzy image downloading while they wait... they see something happening and the human mind likes conclusions... they will more likely wait then they would if it were blank until an image just popped up in front of them when it was done downloading...

krisidious

12-13-2006, 10:41 PM

deepsand

12-13-2006, 10:48 PM

we should all be calling the big phone and cable compaines and asking why we haven't gotten the fiberoptic lines nationwide we were promised in return for tax breaks and fees ten years ago...

what gives? it's rediculous that we are hurting over 100kbs...

We should also be asking why we're still paying extra for TouchTone service, as opposed to rotary dial service, when the costs of implementing such were long ago paid off, and the cross-bar switches are now relics, used now only by the very smallest of local carriers.

DrTandem1

12-14-2006, 12:46 AM

You cannot buy what's not available.

Broadband has yet to make significant penetration outside metro areas, as the Tier 1 & 2 players find it to be not sufficiently profitable. In the U.S., broadband usages has yet to reach 50%, whether measured by households or adult population.

As for "Typical modem speeds ... going up by the month," such is neither happening nor physically possible using the currently available modulation methodologies and the FCC's cap on power limits on POTs lines.

Ignore those without broadband at your own peril.

While I agree with your basic premise of not ignoring those on lower speeds, I disagree with you perception of broadband. Both AT&T and Verizon have made it a focal point of their respective businesses to bring fiber to the end user via FTTP and FTTN. As cable companies refuse to accommodate the rural users, the telcos are already there and are bringing broadband.

Not only is 15 meg downstream about to become the norm for telco subscribers, but IPTV will soon be introduced. No longer will viewers be forced into buying a ton of cable channels that they don't want to watch the few that they do want.

Broadband in San Diego is less than $20/month, while the cable companies are still charging around $50 disguising it with introductory offers.

There are plenty of rural users on DSL thanks to rural DSLAMs. DSL is the access line of the future and fiber will replace it soon afterward.

DrTandem1

12-14-2006, 12:49 AM

We should also be asking why we're still paying extra for TouchTone service, as opposed to rotary dial service, when the costs of implementing such were long ago paid off, and the cross-bar switches are now relics, used now only by the very smallest of local carriers.

No one pays extra for touchtone since the late 70's. Your telephone service has never included more for less money than it does today thanks to deregulation.

deepsand

12-14-2006, 01:41 AM

deepsand

12-14-2006, 01:48 AM

You cannot buy what's not available.

Broadband has yet to make significant penetration outside metro areas, as the Tier 1 & 2 players find it to be not sufficiently profitable. In the U.S., broadband usages has yet to reach 50%, whether measured by households or adult population.

As for "Typical modem speeds ... going up by the month," such is neither happening nor physically possible using the currently available modulation methodologies and the FCC's cap on power limits on POTs lines.

Ignore those without broadband at your own peril.

While I agree with your basic premise of not ignoring those on lower speeds, I disagree with you perception of broadband. Both AT&T and Verizon have made it a focal point of their respective businesses to bring fiber to the end user via FTTP and FTTN. As cable companies refuse to accommodate the rural users, the telcos are already there and are bringing broadband.

<snip>

There are plenty of rural users on DSL thanks to rural DSLAMs. DSL is the access line of the future and fiber will replace it soon afterward.

While that may be your personal experience, such is borne out by neither mine nor by many of the IT personel in the U.S., Canada or Australia that I regularly communicate with on-line.

Not is it supported by the numerous communications, electronics and data industry publications to which I subscribe.

Cristal7

12-14-2006, 03:42 AM

While I agree with your basic premise of not ignoring those on lower speeds, I disagree with you perception of broadband. Both AT&T and Verizon have made it a focal point of their respective businesses to bring fiber to the end user via FTTP and FTTN. As cable companies refuse to accommodate the rural users, the telcos are already there and are bringing broadband.

Not only is 15 meg downstream about to become the norm for telco subscribers, but IPTV will soon be introduced. No longer will viewers be forced into buying a ton of cable channels that they don't want to watch the few that they do want.
...
There are plenty of rural users on DSL thanks to rural DSLAMs. DSL is the access line of the future and fiber will replace it soon afterward.

In our area, which is largely rural and has new legislation to keep it that way, a local ISP has implemented a wireless internet that is covering much of the territory. Check it out http://www.eldoradowireless.com/
Coming soon to the woods near you...

DrTandem1

12-14-2006, 10:29 AM

Perhaps you'd like to take at look at my Verizon bill, then, and explain the continued surcharge for TouchTone service?

I stand corrected, partially. I forgot that Verizon was Bell Atlantic merged with GTE. Former GTE customers (now Verizon), may still have had that charge. However, my sources tell me that the charge was removed in Philadelphia in 2003. There may be an error on your bill or there may be a problem with your state's PUC.

In California, no such charge exists for Verizon customers. Also, AT&T, Bell South and Qwest do not charge for Touchtone. You always have the option to go with a CLEC or cable (if available). There are a lot of "extra charges" on the East Coast, and not just for phone service, if you get my drift.

In any event, DSL has surpassed cable modems in growth and will soon overtake them in total sales. I think you may be surprised at how much DSL is available in rural areas.

Broadband, no matter what the flavor, is definitely overtaking dial-up. However, I would still not have a bloated page for an e-commerce site.

pemburung

12-14-2006, 11:07 AM

Steering the topic back to accessibility/usability, regardless of the technical issues the reports quoted indicate an on-going dial-up usage in the US at least of between 15 and 20%; this is probably equal or greater in other countries. A fair chunk of market, and one we've read includes many affluent users. The Nielson report also reports that a high percentage of broadband users use their connection almost exclusively for social purposes, downloading and similar. I think this helps explain the earlier 44% figure.

With a few exceptions, most purchasers' needs can be met with a site that downloads quickly; where special services are required, such as high-res photos, 3D actualizations, etc there are techniques to make those selectable by the user, and not add substantially to initial download time.

Lastly, if you want to keep or build high-load sites for your business, feel free; there are many other similar businesses who will service the left-out customers (in addition to high-speed ones), take their money, and thank you. And, probablitity is that when they do get DSL, they'll return to their original supplier, bookmarked on their computer.

It might even be that the relatively low 11% figure reflects a bunch of dial-up customers who didn't wait and weren't counted.

DrTandem1

12-14-2006, 11:23 AM

edhan

12-14-2006, 11:19 PM

Again, fast is fast, but not always, especially for cable users. Many nodes are overloaded and overbooked. This brings down speeds at peak times.

Yes. Cable can be 'fast' when not much people using. I had cable modem and I can hit 300+ kbps at odd hours for downloading but during the peak time, I can download at only 2 - 3 kbps. It is so frustrating so I switch to broadband modem. Now my worst download speed is 11 kbps. At least it is better than cable.

sysopdan

12-15-2006, 09:48 PM

Just some obversations. I have had web sites since 1996 and hosted them in my house with a 128K IDSN circuit. I later became a national ISP and had full T1 circuits. Even with that bandwidth I was always cognizant of page size and try to keep pages below 50K.

I use an editing tool but basicly write all the code by hand. I tried FP and hated it. I like looking at the code and it was nearly impossible to follow. I also hated it because of all the 1 pixel tags in put in to space things. FP users move images and play with the pages so they just become bloated with code. All those tags have to be downloaded. The only graphical program I liked at all is Adobe GoLive which lets you easily switch between the graphic view and the code.

CABLE or DSL? I think it depends on the carrier and location. I have had DSL and Cable here in Key West, and DSL is really bad. Cable, at any time of the day is far superior. That is web surfing. For upload speed, DSL was really terrible.

I put in an IP camera for a friend's store. He got DSL at first. The camera was the only thing on the circuit and we got one frame every 3 seconds. This was the speed on DSL down the street or at the next island where I lived. This was a commercial circuit too and we were supposed to have 384k upload speed. It was also the speed with cable on the other end. We changed the camera to a cable modem and now on the other end we get a couple of frames a second.

Around the world, DSL is not equal. I setup offices in 04 in Ukraine and what they call DSL is a bit better than a 56k modem. Dialup is 33.6. There are no digital circuits that would allow 56k modems. Bandwidth is expensive.

If you live in a rural area with cable or DSL, dialup is about it. One option is DirectWAY but that is only about 115k.

So, all things considered, page limits should be considered in building a site, along with the audience that is going to look at it. I mean, if you are selling 3 million dollar MRI machines or private jets, you probably don't have to worry about dialup users.

Finally, the ADA applies to places of public accomodation. It never applied to websites, but the Target case is an example of a lawyer trying to expand the law. We shall see.

DrTandem1

12-15-2006, 11:20 PM

I think that the discussion of connection speed is for surfing rather than hosting. By the way, most cable companies forbid the subscriber from hosting.

DSL, which is really ADSL (asynchronous) allows for different speeds for upstream or downstream. It is generally better for the surfer to have a higher downstream rate than upstream. Downstream speeds are the ones you see advertised. However, there are DSL speeds available in the reverse, so if you host or have a lot of data to send upstream you can.

deepsand

12-16-2006, 11:23 AM

Again, fast is fast, but not always, especially for cable users. Many nodes are overloaded and overbooked. This brings down speeds at peak times.

The bottomline is everything else being equal, the faster site wins in e-commerce no matter what connection the visitor is using.

People tend to either not be aware of, or forget that, one's local cable loop is shared, not to mention the fact that, regardless of the number of subscribers, there is a fixed number of up- and down-slots available at the head end.

As for Verizon's billing for a TouchTone surcharge, that continues, with the blessings of the PUC, for Verizon-PA, and perhaps Verizon-North as well.

DrTandem1

12-17-2006, 10:54 AM

DSL is the access line of the future and fiber will replace it soon afterward.

While that may be your personal experience, such is borne out by neither mine nor by many of the IT personel in the U.S., Canada or Australia that I regularly communicate with on-line.

Not is it supported by the numerous communications, electronics and data industry publications to which I subscribe.

Oh really? You may want to contact Verizon, Bell South, Qwest and AT&T and tell them to stop deploying DSL and fiber.

The fact is that these four (soon to be three) remaining RBOCs have publicly declared that DSL is their access line of the future as it is replacing dial tone as their core business. Moreover, fiber is their ultimate goal.

The actual capacity of fiber is not known. Unlike copper and coax, we have never developed a switch that comes close surpassing fiber's capacity. In other words, fiber's bandwidth is virtually unlimited.

While cable companies cherry-pick dense urban areas, the telcos have done an outstanding job of spreading broadband through out their footprints which include rural areas that cable won't touch.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060719-7298.html

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=5838

http://newscenter.verizon.com/kit/fiber/

http://www.igigroup.com/st/pages/fttp2.html

http://www.qwest.com/disclosures/netdisclosure510.html

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=71866

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-73079966.html

PDF:
http://www.bell-labs.com/news/2003/july/FTTP_wpLtr_121703.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTTP

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA501628.html?display=Features&ref

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

krisidious

12-17-2006, 11:40 AM

I'd like to see who all those websites are owned by... mmm never trust what you do not have factual proof of...

personally I know the phone companies from another point of view, my grand father was regional manager for Southwestern Bell in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area... my girl friends father growing up laid fiber optic cable for ATT and MCI in the 90's...

MCI bought their way into the Telcom market by installing hundereds and hundreds of miles of Fiber... the phone companies and the cable compaines want to offer what ever sells to their public I believe this after being around them so long, but they are highly profitable entities and when a company is profitable, it's hard to make it blow money in the short term for overall public gain over the long haul with out some kind of incentive... as you saw with MCI, it was so important to show big that they inflated their earnings, and thus fell from grace...

I believe in what Tandem is saying, it's DSL, it's fiber and it's coming, it's just going to take a lot longer than they said... but we have to keep the pressure up... and that means all of us building 2 meg home pages so that we choke it out of them, 1 kilobyte at a time....

I think one thing has been missing from this thread... normally it's the internet that is blamed for slow speeds, most people think that you being the all knowing webmaster must have built the page with them in mind so it must be this danfangled ENTERNET thing slowing me up.... curse you ENTERNET....

DrTandem1

12-17-2006, 12:11 PM

The web sites I selected are from not only the respective companies, but also industry magazines and the neutral Wikipedia. They all report that the telcos are heavily invested in bringing fiber broadband to the consumer.

Of course, it is to make money, but it is also to survive. For years, the telcos have not only been not allowed to compete, but have also been forced to sell below cost to their competitors.

AT&T and Verizon are really moving fast. Verizon is deploying fiber only to the premise, while AT&T is trying to save money with a dual approach using fiber to the node in more established areas.

Verizon, which started first, is further along than AT&T. However, AT&T's projection is three years to complete their "Project Lightspeed." The merger of Bell South will play into this. Qwest is probably the last.

SBC, which bought AT&T and kept the name, inherited AT&T's world presence that included their nation-wide network.

Unregulated MCI WorldCom, which wiped out the savings of their employees via an accounting scandal, was released from the debt through bankruptcy proceedings and called simply MCI (again). It was bought by Verizon after a bidding war with Qwest as a response to SBC's capture of the prized AT&T network and name.

While end-user connection speed is one part of the puzzle, bottlenecks can and do appear elsewhere on the internet. So, a web site designer should concern itself with what it can control for speed. That only thing (if its not also the host) is the file size of its pages.

Azam

12-17-2006, 09:16 PM

New report: 12/12/06 - Over Three-Fourths of U.S. Active Internet Users Connect via Broadband (http://www.netratings.com/pr/pr_061212.pdf)... and in a few months it with be 4/5ths and then 5/6ths...

krisidious

12-17-2006, 10:11 PM

those are some interesting numbers... I'd like to know how Netratings Inc get's it's numbers...

DrTandem1

12-17-2006, 10:14 PM

Say it was 95% use broadband. Would you ignore 5% of your potential market? I think not.

Say it was now 100% broadband. The fastest site (all else being equal) now gains 100% of the market.

Do you see that file size still matters?

deepsand

12-20-2006, 08:35 PM

[quote=DrTandem1]

DSL is the access line of the future and fiber will replace it soon afterward.

While that may be your personal experience, such is borne out by neither mine nor by many of the IT personel in the U.S., Canada or Australia that I regularly communicate with on-line.

Not is it supported by the numerous communications, electronics and data industry publications to which I subscribe.

Oh really? You may want to contact Verizon, Bell South, Qwest and AT&T and tell them to stop deploying DSL and fiber.

<snip>

The issue addressed by my post was as re. the penetration outside of metro areas. Such is neither so widespread now, nor increasing so quickly, as you seem to believe.

DrTandem1

12-20-2006, 09:30 PM

If dozens and dozens of articles, press releases and rising telecom stock prices can't convince you, then I certainly can't.

deepsand

12-20-2006, 10:22 PM

If dozens and dozens of articles, press releases and rising telecom stock prices can't convince you, then I certainly can't.

1) Rising stock prices are not a measure of penetration in rural areas;
2) I could, if I chose to, also quote numerous trade publications (electronics, data, communications, etc.) re. the lack of broadband coverage in rural areas; and,
3) I must give my personal experiences, along with those of my colleagues in the U.S., Canada and Australia, the highest credence, as they are empirical observations.

DrTandem1

12-21-2006, 08:46 AM

The only factors of page load speed controlled by the web site designer are the file size of the page, whether it is slowed by heavy scripting and applications that need certain plug-ins. I leave hosting out as often the designer has no choice in this matter.

Going onto one of the main factors that they can not control is the visitors' connection speeds. Like it or not, they are getting faster as ALL of the world moves to broadband. Currently, the least expensive way to do this is DSL. Yes, WiFi is used in some areas, but we're talking about dedicated broadband service.

It's cheaper than cable, because cable rarely expends cash to build to rural areas and the telcos are already there. DSL will work on twisted pair that is in existence. With the advent of rural DSLAMS and FTTN, broadband deployment has been accelerated. Within the next five years, it will be difficult to find a community that doesn't have broadband.

Now, remember, you are talking about rural areas. By definition, they are sparsely populated. Some are served by independent telcos. Even the independents are bringing broadband to rural areas.

What you don't seem to be able to understand is that broadband is the "access line." Telcos used to be concerned about how many POTS lines they had. Now, they are concerned with broadband, no matter what the flavor. If a customer has broadband from a company, they will tend to get all of their other telephone and entertainment services from that same company.

AT&T (now merging with Bell South), Verizon and Qwest are morphing from only telephone companies into entertainment companies. To do that, they need to bring broadband to their customers.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60525,00.html

http://telephonyonline.com/mag/telecom_dsl_breaks_rural/index.html

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-4315899_ITM

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0606/

http://www.speedguide.net/read_news.php?id=2008

Not just in the US:

http://www.convergedigest.com/dsl/lastmilearticle.asp?ID=8500

deepsand

12-22-2006, 08:12 PM

<snip>

With the advent of rural DSLAMS and FTTN, broadband deployment has been accelerated. Within the next five years, it will be difficult to find a community that doesn't have broadband.

Most would be rural ADSL subscribers are still further from a CO than the max. supportable distance.

Now, remember, you are talking about rural areas. By definition, they are sparsely populated. Some are served by independent telcos. Even the independents are bringing broadband to rural areas.

But, rural areas in total comprise a greater area than that of the metro areas combined; population density alone is not a measure to total population. The problem is that while the aggregate total no. of those unserved by broadband may be great, the density is not sufficiently high so as to interest the ILECS. And, independents generally don't have the resources to roll out broad band; hell, some of them still use cross-bar switches, rotary dial service, and local PBXs!

What you don't seem to be able to understand is that broadband is the "access line." Telcos used to be concerned about how many POTS lines they had. Now, they are concerned with broadband, no matter what the flavor. <snip>

Ah, but I do understand. And, bear in mind that ADSL is carried on pots lines.

AT&T (now merging with Bell South), Verizon and Qwest are morphing from only telephone companies into entertainment companies. To do that, they need to bring broadband to their customers.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60525,00.html

http://telephonyonline.com/mag/telecom_dsl_breaks_rural/index.html

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-4315899_ITM

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0606/

http://www.speedguide.net/read_news.php?id=2008

Not just in the US:

http://www.convergedigest.com/dsl/lastmilearticle.asp?ID=8500

All well and good, but these are not technical industry publications. To get all the facts, one must read the publications of the electronics, information technology, and communications industries; e.g., those from Alcatel, Seimens, Lucent (now merged with Alcatel), National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Agilent, etc..

DrTandem1

12-22-2006, 08:45 PM

deepsand

12-22-2006, 10:13 PM

I'll tell you what, show me a couple of recent articles that say broadband to rural areas is on the decline. After all, you seem to have so many sources, you should be able to find one that backs your claims.

I never said that it was on the decline; rather, I said that penetration via DSL and/or cable is neither so great, nor increasing so rapidly, as you seem to believe.

It is this fact that has given rise to the recent interest in BPL, satellite, and municipal Wi-Fi services.

martindow

12-23-2006, 03:56 AM

deepsand

12-23-2006, 10:17 AM

DrTandem1

12-23-2006, 11:26 AM

It is interesting reading this. In the UK which is much more densely populated than the US there are areas all across the country where broadband is never likely to be available as houses are isolated and too far from exchanges. The only hope is that the government will step in to pay to install local pieces of equipment to fill the gaps. Otherwise there is going to be a sizeable minority left on dial up. Phone and cable companies are never going to pay out to connect up handfuls of consumers at a time who will never repay their investment. In a more scattered population as in the US I can imagine that this is a much more widespread problem.

Not really. You see, the telephone company in the US was never a government owned entity. It was a regulated private industry. Therefore, the main telephone company was the Bell System. It built its network to some of the most remote regions of the US and Canada.

The beauty of DSL and FTTN is that the "last mile" can be old copper twisted pair for broadband. It really is amazing that facilities that were literally deployed in the time of Alexander Graham Bell are being used today to transport broadband.

Today, with regulation finally being eased and allowing the now four (soon to be three) remaining RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) to compete on equal footing with other telecom companies, broadband has actually penetrated much faster to rural areas than it would have otherwise.

One reason is that the RBOCs have now been allowed to sell of their most remote areas to smaller independent telephone companies who have found a lucrative niche market for broadband.

One poster here thinks that broadband is not penetrating the rural markets at a very fast rate. If you think about it, the internet is very new. To have people with broadband access today where they still had party lines just a few years ago is amazing. While he is arguing just to argue, the facts speak for themselves. Broadband will be commonplace in very short order. The key is to keep regulations to a minimum and competition high.

martindow

12-23-2006, 11:40 AM

But will the Telcos be interested in making the investment for all the odd groups of houses in rural areas we are talking about? What is the incentive for profit making companies to spend thousands connecting the odd houses here and there or equipping remote exchanges? In some parts of Britain it is being made possible to fill the gaps by using government or EC money to subsidise the uneconomic parts of the system where private companies are not interested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4478497.stm

DrTandem1

12-23-2006, 01:11 PM

What is rural today will not necessarily be rural tomorrow. Also, while it may not be cost-effective for a large telco to deal with a small rural area, another more nimble company will find it a niche market. That is the beauty of competition.

Let's be clear, broadband is available to everyone, everywhere in the US. If you have the money, you can get broadband. That doesn't mean it is currently offered as a standard product or service everywhere.

As an example, where cable TV failed to provide service, the satellite companies filled the void. If there is a market for it in the US, someone will fill the demand.

Regarding subsidies, similar surcharges have been forced upon the American consumers for years. This was to fund everything from rural areas to handicap services. Realistically, such taxes, and that's what they are, rarely are an efficient way to fund services. Most of the money goes to "administrative costs."

It is far better to allow the free market to drive industry. To use socialism usually provides a standard level of misery for everyone. In other words, it is far easier to take away from everyone to produce "equality" rather than lift all up to a higher standard of quality. A free market encourages competition and thus a choice as well as opportunity for all.

deepsand

12-23-2006, 04:59 PM

[quote=martindow]<snip>

One poster here thinks that broadband is not penetrating the rural markets at a very fast rate. If you think about it, the internet is very new. To have people with broadband access today where they still had party lines just a few years ago is amazing. While he is arguing just to argue, the facts speak for themselves. Broadband will be commonplace in very short order. The key is to keep regulations to a minimum and competition high.

Do not presume to know either my motives for speaking, or the bread and depth of my knowledge.

If you wish to remain ignorant of certain facts, so as to cling to your conclusions, so be it; at the least, you are entitled to an opinion. Just don't try to pass it off as a proven fact.

The Universe is a cold uncaring place, and it does'nt give a damn about opinions.

martindow

12-23-2006, 05:44 PM

We're all giving opinions aren't we? If what is going to be the situation in 5 or 10 years was known there would be no discussion here. We are all agreed that broadband coverage will increase it's just a matter of extent. I still don't see that there will be commercial reasons for companies to consider connecting very remote and difficult houses. Their interest is in making money not in providing 100 per cent coverage.

Incidentally it could make for some interesting reading if the mods could dredge up some old threads from several years ago to see how opinions on how technology might develop actually compare with where we are now.

DrTandem1

12-23-2006, 05:50 PM

Do not presume to know either my motives for speaking, or the bread and depth of my knowledge.

If you wish to remain ignorant of certain facts, so as to cling to your conclusions, so be it; at the least, you are entitled to an opinion. Just don't try to pass it off as a proven fact.

The Universe is a cold uncaring place, and it does'nt give a damn about opinions.

I assume you meant "breadth and depth of my knowledge." I do have opinions, but we were talking facts. The fact is prevalence of broadband is increasing and it is to the point where it now more common than not. Rural areas, by definition, have less urban amenities. However, broadband is available and becoming more so everyday in rural areas. It is simply a fact. To argue otherwise is just foolish.

Since you have been unable to cite one reference showing that rural areas are not getting broadband and then spun it to say that you meant it wasn't happening fast, whatever "fast" means to you, I'll give you another chance. Please cite a reference showing the speed of broadband deployment that backs your statements. I have cited several that show the growth and the future growth planned.

deepsand

12-23-2006, 08:30 PM

<snip>

Since you have been unable to cite one reference showing that rural areas are not getting broadband and then spun it to say that you meant it wasn't happening fast, whatever "fast" means to you, I'll give you another chance. Please cite a reference showing the speed of broadband deployment that backs your statements. I have cited several that show the growth and the future growth planned.

1) What you've cited are examples of others doing that which you claim is being done by the Tier 1 players. Such in fact supports my contention that the major ILECs have little to no present interest in provisioning rural areas.

2) Such isolated examples do not prove that rural America, Canada, Australia, etc. are, as a whole, being rapidly provisioned for broadband. At present, such are the exceptions, rather than the rule.

3) To dismiss out of hand the personal experiences of a significant number of IT professionals is both unjustified and wholly unacceptable.

To give you but one example of the dearth of broadband access in rural America, I give you the Delmarva peninsula, which sits in the heart of the East Coast Megalopolis, home to one-quarter of the nation's population. Once one ventures south of the DE metro areas of Wilmington and Newark, broadband access is virtually non-existent. Without satellite service, most residents would have little or no access to TV. Those who live close enough to the MD/VA border, and can afford it, do have access to T1 service; and that only by virtue of the presence of the military station at Wallop's Island.

I submit that, by virtue of being in CA, you lack a sufficiently broad perspective of what is and is not available in the rest of the country. Travel, for example, throughout NY, PA, MD, VA, WV, KY,OH, IN, IL, MI & MN, and then tell us how well wired for broadband this country is.

And, compare broadband availability in the U.S. to much of the rest of the world; you'll see that we greatly lag behind many so called developing nations.

DrTandem1

12-24-2006, 12:47 AM

So, nothing to support your claim.

deepsand

12-24-2006, 10:11 AM

So, nothing to support your claim.

Non sequitur.

As pointed out, the sources cited by you serve as support for my claim.

And, that you refuse to accept empirical observations from the field, preferring instead to rely on polls, whose results differ greatly, is irrelevant with respect to the facts.

You're really beginning to sound an awful lot like maxwell edison.

DrTandem1

12-24-2006, 11:42 AM

Gee, some 15 posts to this point in time and not one example that backs your claims. You came close by citing some rural areas that have T1 access, but that supported my claim, not yours. You continue to use circle reasoning using a flawed premise and an incorrect conclusion and then try to support it using correct examples that actually defeat your argument in hopes that defeat will be overlooked.

You remind me of the character in the Monty Python skit where the man pays for an argument and all he gets is somebody disagreeing with absolutely no logic to support it. Sorry, your time is up.

While you are busy using your thesaurus in a failed attempt to appear intelligent by being verbose (i.e. "Do not presume to know either my motives for speaking, or the bread[sic] and depth of my knowledge") look up "idiot." You may find an image of yourself that you can use in future postings.

deepsand

12-24-2006, 06:58 PM

DrTandem1

12-24-2006, 07:09 PM

Deepsand: "I came here for an argument!"

DrT: "Sorry, your time is up!"

Deepsand: "No it's not!"

DrT: "Uh, uh uh!"

Adapted from Monty Python.

deepsand

12-24-2006, 10:45 PM

Deepsand: "I came here for an argument!"

DrT: "Sorry, your time is up!"

Deepsand: "No it's not!"

DrT: "Uh, uh uh!"

Adapted from Monty Python.

Good night, Irene.

DrTandem1

01-01-2007, 06:06 PM

For those who really doubt rural areas are getting the attention they need, please get a copy of OSP's December 2006. It has a great article entitled, "Green Acres is the Place to Be." If you want to see a brief tease for the article by Sid Schmid, please visit:

http://www.ospmag.com

The actual articles gives some good references.

Webnauts

01-03-2007, 10:11 PM

Would you ignore 5% of your potential market? I think not.
I would not either. But most web sites owners don't even care about 10% of their potential market, because as we both know, 10% of the world population are people with diverse disabilities. How many web site owners care about web sites accessibility?

So after all, my conclusion is, that the majority don't even care about 15% of their potential market. :)

PumaSpirit

01-04-2007, 09:45 AM

Sorry, for some reason my comments posted twice

PumaSpirit

01-04-2007, 09:47 AM

I would not either. But most web sites owners don't even care about 10% of their potential market, because as we both know, 10% of the world population are people with diverse disabilities. How many web site owners care about web sites accessibility?

So after all, my conclusion is, that the majority don't even care about 15% of their potential market. :)

Once, I went computer shopping with a legally blind person. We were looking for the biggest magnifying screen we could find, but it was impossible. He just could not use a pc because he could not read what was on the screen.

He even tried a handheld magnifying glass over the magnified screen. That worked! Practically one letter at a time, as large as the screen. Useless.

I am sure most, if not all of us, care about people with disabilities, but how can you accommodate some of them? Wouldn't it be easier, and perhaps better to design software, disability specific rather than placing the responsibility on webmasters? Webmasters are webmasters, not disability experts.

Sure, in this case you may say: Duh, Audio! But, when it comes time to order, how would he find the order button? Then fill in the order form? etc.

It's not all as cut and dry as it seems.

DrTandem1

01-04-2007, 11:03 AM

I am sure most, if not all of us, care about people with disabilities, but how can you accommodate some of them? Wouldn't it be easier, and perhaps better to design software, disability specific rather than placing the responsibility on webmasters? Webmasters are webmasters, not disability experts.

The problem is government forcing private industry into spreading the misery to the masses, rather than solving the problem for the very few.

Webnauts

01-05-2007, 04:55 AM

Wouldn't it be easier, and perhaps better to design software, disability specific rather than placing the responsibility on webmasters? Webmasters are webmasters, not disability experts.
PumaSpirit I hope you are were just kidding. And by the way, can you explain us here what the term "Webmaster" means?

And what do you want to say here, that Webmasters should not know how to code semantically correct HTML? What do you think accessible web sites are made with? With C++? Perl? Python?...

Did you ever have look at the web content accessibility guidelines, to see what they really are?

And who told you that accessibility is only about people with disabilities?

What about these users?

* using speech browsers or eyes busy/hands busy, as businessmen in cars;
* don't have the latest graphical browsers and plug-ins;
* surfing with slow modems, or reside in rural or remote areas with limited access to the Internet;
* browse without graphics, using text-only browsers or subscribe to non-graphic services;
* access in noisy, high- or low-light environments.
* and many others...

You probably would like to read my article for more details: http://www.webnauts.net/accessibility.html

After all, by taking usability and accessibility issues in account when designing your websites or applications you can make the difference and avoid a lot of users frustration.-

PumaSpirit

01-05-2007, 01:09 PM

Webnauts, I was just refering to disabilities in my statement because I was thinking that there are so many different ones. How could we possibly cover them all? My question was simply as to why we are made responsible for providing solutions when other options could be available.

DrTandem1

01-05-2007, 01:32 PM

Webnauts

01-06-2007, 12:20 AM

It is much easier to spread the misery than solve the problem.
That is very true! LOL

PumaSpirit

01-06-2007, 02:57 PM

It is much easier to spread the misery than solve the problem.
That is very true! LOL

Ditto, lol

deepsand

01-14-2007, 05:36 PM

Webnauts

02-07-2007, 05:35 PM

Did I share these resource herealready?
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/page-weight.html
http://www.die.net/musings/page_load_time/

PumaSpirit

02-07-2007, 09:10 PM

Per the JAN 2007 issue of Internet Retailer, "75 of (online) shoppers complained that web sites generally loaded too slowly, and more than half ... said that they would switch to a competitor's site when that happens."

The moral - design for the slowest target platform.

I'm with those who do not want to wait. Can't count how many times I have clicked away because it took forever to load a page. Makes you wonder if those designers ever visit the pages they create?

deepsand

02-07-2007, 09:23 PM

Are you still having unprotected smokes?

Yup; Pall Mall Reds.

deepsand

02-28-2007, 07:38 PM

F E A T U R E

When It Comes To Broadband, U.S. Plays Follow The Leader

The United States often views itself as a paragon of technology innovation and deployment. In some cases, that view is correct, but not when it comes to broadband deployment, where the country lags considerably behind other major nations. Here's why.
Feb 16, 2007 - By Richard Hoffman Courtesy of InformationWeek

Broadband access in the United States continues to grow at an impressive rate, from 60 million users in March 2005 to 84 million in March 2006, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. As-yet unpublished survey data gathered by Pew in December 2006 shows that 45% of respondents now report broadband access at home.

Despite these compelling growth statistics, the reality isn't quite so rosy, especially when comparing broadband progress in the United States with other industrialized countries.

According to a study by U.K.-based Point Topic, as of the third quarter in 2006, the United States led the world in total number of broadband lines installed with 54.5 million lines, followed by China with 48.6 million. The same Point Topic report, however, indicates that broadband growth rates are much higher in other countries -- for example, China is now projected to surpass the U.S. in total broadband lines within 2007, given current trends. And the total number of broadband lines, while a useful figure for some purposes, isn't the most meaningful statistic for measuring how common and widespread access really is, or to compare broadband progress relative to other nations.

For these judgments, metrics based on per-capita household penetration provide a clearer picture. For instance, it's inevitable that, due to its vastly higher population, China will surpass the U.S. in total number of broadband lines, even if the percentage of people in China with broadband lines stays quite small and access is restricted largely to affluent urban areas.

Looking at the more representative measurement of the percentage of those who have access to broadband connectivity, the United States isn't even in the top 10 countries, various studies indicate. President George W. Bush admitted back in 2004 that while broadband use had tripled over the previous four years, the U.S. then ranked 10th among industrialized nations for broadband availability, and he added, "Tenth is 10 spots too low, as far as I'm concerned." Now almost three years later, how much progress have we made, and where do we stand?

Playing The Numbers Game
There are a variety of data points related to broadband penetration in the United States. One thing on which they all agree: the U.S. is far from being in the lead.

The United States currently ranks 12th in broadband adoption rates, significantly down from its ranking of fourth in 2001, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a 30 member-nation group committed to the development of democratic governments and market economies.

The International Telecommunications Union lists the U.S. as 21st worldwide for broadband penetration rate in 2005. Point Topic shows the United States is in 20th place by number of households with broadband access and in 19th by individual broadband access. Those ranks have been falling, not rising, in recent quarters.

And even the good news isn't that good. Some of the more positive data that has been reported is questionable, such as figures presented in a letter written by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in 2005 and published in The Wall Street Journal, showing what seems to be tremendous growth in U.S. broadband access.

The July, 2005, FCC report that he was citing, which promoted and defended the state of broadband access in the U.S., has received pointed criticism for defining a "high-speed" line as one delivering service of at least 200 Kbps in at least one direction, and for defining a ZIP code as "covered" by broadband access even if just a single broadband line is active in that region. It is true that 200 Kbps was, even in 2005, a minimal definition of "broadband," but it's a level that's largely inadequate for delivering much of what is commonly accepted as "broadband-level service," such as streaming video and swift downloads of large files. It seems clear that measuring "broadband access" by even the relatively modest speeds of 1Mbps or higher would drastically cut the estimate of U.S. broadband penetration.

No Solid Data From The Feds
Associate Director John Horrigan at Pew Internet noted there are indications that our broadband access tends to be slower and less capable than that of a number of other nations, but the lack of solid data from the federal government makes this hard to quantify. "Another element that we don't have data on," said Horrigan, "is the fact that there's not good data in the U.S. on connection speed. Yes, people are adopting broadband at a good clip in the U.S., but we don't know how fast their connections are. The FCC has no good data on network speed, and that's not a question that you can reliably get by doing a telephone survey."

Increasingly, noted Horrigan, the international debate is not only about rates of broadband adoption but also about speed and quality of the broadband networks. On that metric, the U.S. isn't faring well.

Japan's fastest-growing broadband service offers speeds in excess of 100 Mbps, and Korea offers 100 Mbps uploads and downloads. Most current U.S. customers are lucky to get one-tenth or even one one-hundredth of that speed, particularly for uploads -- and they pay more for the lower speed.

By OECD estimates, the U.S. price-per-megabit of connection speed is more than 10 times as high in the U.S. as in Japan. And for sheer speed, overseas offerings blow the U.S. away. While major U.S. carriers, such as Verizon, report initiatives to bring high-speed fiber to the home, and a Verizon spokesperson reported current plans to reach 3 million homes per year with high-speed fiber, that's roughly 1% of the U.S. population, even if that target is met. Only 1% to 2% of U.S. broadband users in Pew's latest study report having fiber or T1-speed access, while some other nations are more aggressively pursuing deployment of fiber to the home and other forms of very high-speed connectivity.

A Rural Explanation? Hardly
One of the rationales often given for lower broadband penetration in the U.S. is that low population density makes broadband deployment, especially in rural areas, considerably more expensive in the U.S. than among more dense populations in countries such as Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. That argument falters, however, when one considers that five of the 11 nations that lead the U.S. in per capita broadband penetration, including Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, have significantly lower population densities than the U.S.

Another argument commonly invoked for lower-than-expected U.S broadband penetration rates notes that higher income tends to be associated with increased adoption of any new technology, and most of the countries with the highest rates of broadband use tend to be highly affluent. Despite its comparatively high poverty rate, the United States is ranked second overall for gross domestic product among OECD nations, ahead of every nation except Luxembourg, and the World Bank's latest numbers for 2005 estimate the U.S. is seventh in worldwide gross national income per capita, and third in per-capita purchasing power. As a rule, prosperity clearly correlates with broadband access, but the United States is comparatively more affluent than most of the nations it trails in the broadband arena.

A third demographic possibility which could affect the analysis of broadband adoption rates is median age of the population. There are indications that lower age tends to correlate with heavier Internet use in general, and broadband use specifically, as younger users tend to be more likely to be early adopters of new products and technologies. Yet the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that the U.S. has a statistically younger population based on median age than all the countries -- except Iceland and Korea -- that are ranked higher for broadband adoption.

The bottom line is that the United States currently has a strong and growing broadband infrastructure and is still a powerful innovator and test bed for advanced research and development in this area. But the U.S. isn't even close to being the leader in widespread broadband availability and usage and, in fact, may be dropping further behind the "first tier" of broadband-rich countries in Northern Europe and Asia.

Eating Korea's Dust
Korea is perhaps the best example of a country's rapid rise to widespread broadband availability. By almost all measures, Korea far surpasses all other nations in terms of broadband access, while Japan is the leader for price and highest typical connection speed. Over the 10 years between 1997 and 2007, Korea went from no broadband access to approximately 70% of households wired for broadband. Korea has a tradition of constructive and proactive government policy and involvement in building industry and technological capability to be competitive in the international market.

The United States has tended to swing between over-regulation and a hands-off, purely market-driven approach, neither of which, it could be argued, has served it well over the long term. Government is playing a key role in broadband development in the U.S., but proactive government initiatives have tended in recent years to occur on the state and local level more than through federal policies.

State and local governments across the country are stepping in with increasing urgency in an attempt to improve both wired and wireless broadband access. Jim Douglas, the second-term Republican governor of Vermont, in his January 2007 inaugural address, gave special attention to development of a broadband infrastructure, and promised to make Vermont the first "e-state," a proposition that involves near-ubiquitous wireless voice and data coverage throughout the state.

"While we take incremental steps to build a hard-wired network, the wireless world moves ahead. Homes that do not have broadband available are becoming increasingly difficult to sell," Douglas said at the time. "Entrepreneurs looking to start a new business will barely consider breaking ground in a community without good cellular coverage. Broadband Internet and wireless cellular are no longer mere conveniences afforded to urbanites or the well-heeled; they are a fundamental part of modern life for all Vermonters, as essential as electricity and good roads."

Douglas' proposal to create a Vermont Telecommunications Authority, to partner with private firms to improve cellular coverage and offer universal broadband access, is innovative and forward-looking. And coming from the highest state-level government official in Vermont, it also is a tacit recognition that the federal government isn't doing all it could to encourage broadband adoption throughout the United States, and that broadband coverage isn't currently adequate in many areas.

Doing It Locally
The ConnectKentucky program, an alliance of public agencies, private companies, and nongovernmental organizations, and a winner of the U.S. Economic Development Administration's Excellence in Innovation Award, is, through a variety of programs and initiatives, attempting to push for full broadband deployment statewide by the end of 2007.

One of the key tasks ConnectKentucky has pursued is a thorough set of surveys to determine broadband connectivity in its state. Among the central findings of those surveys has been that for those who don't have broadband connectivity, access and cost are the two main impediments. That critical result echoes other studies in the U.S.: the primary reasons homes in the U.S. don't use broadband tend to be lack of availability and high cost.

The city of Philippi in Barbour County, W.Va., whose economy has historically been based on mining, wood products, and agriculture, has put itself on the broadband map by pursuing the creation of a fiber to the home network, creating high-speed access in an area that has previously been underserved. A recipient of one of the largest USDA Rural Broadband grants available -- $2.3 million -- Philippi is bringing the kind of bandwidth to its citizens that most rural residents can only dream of, proof of the positive effect even limited public money can have when used to support broadband initiatives.

But even where local and regional governments have attempted to take matters into their own hands, success hasn't been guaranteed. SB740, introduced in the West Virginia Senate in 2005, was intended to increase broadband availability in the state by allowing local government bodies to act as Internet service providers in those communities where service wasn't already available. After intense lobbying by major telecommunications firms, the bill was weakened, and eventually dropped. This matches a pattern seen repeatedly across the country -- where a number of local municipalities and groups across the U.S. have created local broadband access opportunities where none previously existed, powerful lobbying efforts by telecommunications firms have smothered many of these initiatives.

The history of the telecommunications industry and government policy in the United States has been one of periods of government-enhanced monopoly and heavy regulation followed by a vigorous swing toward deregulation and pure market-force approaches. Overly intrusive governmental control or regulation of technology and telecommunications infrastructure has shown itself to have numerous pitfalls.

Yet the intensely "hands-off" market-driven system in recent years seems to have resulted in a chaotic and inefficient marketplace, and one that doesn't represent the true state of the United States as a technology leader. Laissez-faire isn't a viable stance if the goal is to compete most effectively against other industrialized nations.

Carriers Focused On ROI
The existing large telecommunications providers invest their money where there is maximum return on investment, which results in a patchwork of coverage throughout the U.S. Telecom providers maximize profits and spend millions of dollars lobbying to create laws that decrease competitive challenges, while having little incentive to provide new services to less population-dense areas of the country, or to increase speed and lower costs for those who already do have service. This state of affairs stands in marked contrast to the situation in those nations that are truly broadband leaders.

In the absence of widespread government initiatives and incentives to roll out broadband services in rural areas, telecom providers have made the decision to maximize profits by rolling out service in those areas that have the highest population density and lowest cost of build-out per customer. The free market wins in the short term, quarterly profits are maximized, but the customers in less-profitable geographic areas lose, and the nation as a whole loses out over the long term, falling behind other nations with more farsighted policies.

While there's certainly a degree of competition in the country's broadband market, and broadband access prices are trending slowly downward, prices are still much higher in the U.S. than in many of the countries that lead the world in broadband use. Part of the cause for this pricing disparity can be attributed to the fact that competition brings lower prices and greater innovation, and the U.S. broadband market is, in many ways, not highly competitive.

In many areas of the United States, the choice largely comes down to a dominant DSL carrier and a dominant cable carrier, both protected by historical and regulatory environments that allow cable and telecommunications companies to control the "last mile" to the home. The top four cable and DSL companies (Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Time-Warner) provide more than 55% of the U.S. broadband market. If, as the government policy seems to be stating, the goal is robust competition, the policy is failing. The availability of wireless broadband changes the environment somewhat, but wired speeds and bandwidth will almost always be higher than that available via wireless, so exclusive control of that "last mile" of wire to the home still means that competition for the highest-speed telecommunications services will continue to be limited.

Losing The Lead
The United States may be a technology leader, but it isn't a broadband leader, in relative coverage and use of broadband, in speed and capability of the services that are widely available, or in price. Broadband infrastructure in the United States, while healthy by some measures, is marked with surprisingly little competition in some key critical areas, and in others, such as wireless communication and data services, a patchwork of incompatible technologies has led to inconsistent and often substandard regional service, duplication of effort, and waste of resources -- exactly the problems that telephone regulation in the 20th century was designed to address.

It's clear that broadband access isn't just a faster and more convenient way to view Web pages and download songs or e-mail. Many applications in use now, such as videoconferencing, IP telephony, and video-on-demand, and many more which are still over the horizon, are dependent on broadband access.

Broadband is a leveler. It opens markets and possibilities to people who may be geographically distant from traditional centers of commerce -- people who could be doing valuable, productive, high-skilled work, or bringing new products to a global market -- if they had the capacity to do so. Many nations have recognized that widespread broadband access is a critical strategic asset, pumping billions of dollars into their economies and enabling entirely new kinds of business models and economic opportunities.

Developing nations see broadband as an invaluable tool for their economic growth -- India's government, for example, has finalized a policy to accelerate the growth of broadband services, noting the services' potential to improve GDP as well as quality of life.

Those nations able to craft genuinely forward-looking telecommunications policies that promote universal access as well as enhancing competition, and which can balance short-term market forces against long-term national priorities, will reap the current and future benefits of increased economic productivity. They will be the true trailblazers, and the first to see and make use of the rich possibilities which lie ahead. It remains to be seen whether the United States will regain the initiative, and be among those leaders.

topboy

03-13-2007, 06:56 PM

The internet is booming, soon everyone will have broadband or higher, im not too worried about the download rate for a 56k, thats the past now, i believe

Webnauts

03-14-2007, 12:59 PM

The internet is booming, soon everyone will have broadband or higher, im not too worried about the download rate for a 56k, thats the past now, i believe
I don't think so that it is past: Read the posts of this thread once, and then repeat what you said if you would not mind.

deepsand

03-14-2007, 10:12 PM

The latest survey by Internet Retailer magazine shows a substantial amount of traffic still comes from other than broadband; and, that the time to load the home page for a broadband visitor exceeds 5 seconds for one-third of the respondents.

Taken together, the data from this survey highlight the need for online merchants to look toward making their sites more lean.

The survey, and the accompanying article, which appeared in the MAR07 issue, can be viewed at
http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=21575

deepsand

03-22-2007, 04:14 PM

http://www.thedevweb.com/thedevweb-26-20070214SpeedupPageLoadTimeswmod_deflate.html

thorfjalar

04-16-2007, 10:08 AM

50 KB page size? That's like two small thumbs and some text. This page here is 283 KB so I guess webproworld assumes its visitors have DSL or are patient?

deepsand

04-18-2007, 12:26 PM

50 KB page size? That's like two small thumbs and some text. This page here is 283 KB so I guess webproworld assumes its visitors have DSL or are patient?

Most likely, like the majority of developers, the inherent assumption is access via broadband.

dvdtvshows1

05-19-2007, 04:02 PM

deepsand

05-19-2007, 06:45 PM

The Internet Retailer stats are great.
Our main page loads at under 50 KB and has a ton of content.
More importantly, our site senses if you are coming in on a mobile phone, or treo, or blackberry, etc. and feeds you a .mobi style site if you are.
How many of you are starting to vary your site depending on whether the visitor is on mobile?

See no evidence yet of any mobile traffic.

As an aside, though, it is interesting to note that we see more traffic from those using Win 95/98 than Vista users! And, Win2K traffic swamps Vista.