Connection Speed

I started blogging in early 2006 on a dial-up connection.  Being semi-rural that was the only internet connection available to us.  We moved to fully rural in the late spring of 2007.  We had the choice of dial-up which meant two phone lines or satellite internet.  Now satellite internet is a who beast of it's own.  It is faster than dial-up but in no way compares to DSL or cable internet with respect to speed.  If a mosquito flies through the beam, the service goes down.  I'm not kidding!  Our beam comes out of the Toronto area so a cloud flitting through anywhere from here to there will make the service go down.  Now as if that isn't bad enough considering we are paying $65 per month for this fickle service, if you manage to go over some magical bandwidth amount at any given time you get FAPed meaning your service is slowed down to less than dial-up speed until it resets.  Our service is good in that the reset time is on the top of the hour unlike a couple of companies that will FAP you for 24 hours.

With this in mind and having had no choice but to use dial-up or satellite I am very conscious of my blog loading times.  The reality is many readers simply do not have access to high speed internet services.  There are many areas in Canada and even in North America where the only internet service you can get is dial-up.  Blog loading time can be decreased by optimizing graphics, hosting graphic with your blog host, lessening the number of posts appearing on your landing page and minimizing the number of widgets.

Garden Gnome
©2009-2011