Is it just me or is the Internet getting slower?
Yeah, I have a broadband connection. I pay Time Warner buku bucks for their superior or supreme or sooperdooper Internet service. It’s fast, but my perception is that the Internet I’m seeing isn’t flowing through the pipes as fast as it once did.
I’m not talking about overall speed. I can still play intense games without any lag. And watching videos seems to work well. The problems seem intermittent and unpredictable.
For example, a web page refuses to load. It’s just “not found.” A refresh results in the web page coming up. Granted, that could just be a problem with Time-Warner, but my Comcast friends tell me that they have the same issues.
Sometimes a web page only partially appears. You know, you see lots of missing picture icons and only raw text. Welcome back to 1994! Again, a refresh cleans things up, eventually.
The problem happens with all kinds of web pages, from my personal pages, to local pages, to great big Internet web sites that I know are out there.
Thinking that the problem was just with my Mac, I tried visiting a few sites on the PC. Same issue: slowly loading pages or sometimes pages not being found at all.
Here’s my nutball theory: The economy is down. The folks who bring us high speed Internet service are pinching pennies and, like the rest of us, trying to survive. So they’re not putting much into infrastructure. In other words, they’re letting performance suffer either because they can’t afford it or because they can get away with it.
Maybe I’m correct, maybe I’m in nutball heaven. But the fact remains that the Internet is not the peppy reliable beast it once was. For me, at least.
It is not just you. I get my internet service from the same company that provides cable tv (in fact it comes in on the same wire). When I report slow service, they send a technician to my house. He absolutely will not look at my computer (“company policy”). He unplugs the wire from my computer, plugs it into his laptop, runs some arcane software, and inevitably reports that the service is fine. I have no way to independently verify this, and no way to get a second opinion. I do not even bother reporting slow service any more.
Now the city is being wired for fiber optic cable. I do not currently plan to switch over, but I hope enough people do that it lights a fire under the cable company’s feet.
Comment by sean bernard — May 31, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
I figured it wasn’t me. The service has been spotty all weekend. Even the modem reports that the system is down, and I routinely become disconnected from the Internet while online. You are correct: if these problems persist or get worse, people will switch. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work (message to Congress).
Comment by admin — May 31, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
My internet has been a bit like that… same things, same solution. We use ADSL (low end ADSL at that, as well), and it’s only just come up recently… I initially associated the problem with the upgrade to IE8. Ah, well. Just another little technological annoyance to put up with.
Comment by Douglas — June 7, 2009 @ 8:14 pm