Internet too slow for you?

Are you tired of watching as Netscape politely informs you that your data is being Down Loaded at 200 bytes a second, or less? Ever wonder what happened to that 28.8Kbaud connection you're paying for? Want to know how to get information at 3000 Bytes a second or more? Read this document to find out why, and follow the link at the bottom to find out what to do about it....

Contrary to the general opinion, the Internet isn't slow. However most Australian Internet users could be forgiven for thinking that it is.

The Australian Internet Backbone
The Internet was established initially as a resource for the education and military communities to share information globally. In Australia what is now the public Internet Backbone was until recently operated by the education community. It had been established to cater to their needs. The Public Australian Internet Backbone has had some growth pains, which of course is to be expected. Over recent months some signifigant upgrades to this system have taken place, and over time it's performance should continue to increase.

Internet Service Providers

With the explosion of people looking to get their information on the Internet, many organisations (and in fact many people) have established themselves as Internet Service Providers, or ISPs. ISP's vary in size and ability, and vary signifigantly in performance. The majority of these providers offer dial up access to the internet - this really means you dial into their network, and join other users and the ISP's servers in a rush from their network to the rest of the Internet. The capacity of the ISP's link to the Internet, and the amount of traffic they have on their network, will dictate how well your connection performs to the rest of the Internet. In most cases an ISP's dial in capacity to their own network exceeds the capacity of their link to the Internet.

There are many good reasons for this. When you are browsing the Web, or surfing the Net, most people will access some information, and then look at it for a while. This means that an ISP needs to provide a link to the Net for only a fraction of the time you are connected to their network. When you ask your software to get some more information from the Web, the ISP's network will pass your information request to the Internet - however the ISP's Internet connection may already be working hard at several other requests - and the ISP will provide you with as much of their capacity as is available at the time you are obtaining information.

The result of this is that in many cases while you are connected to the ISP's network at 14.4KBaud, or 28.8KBaud, you are not necessarily connected to the Internet at that speed.

The end result...

When you request information (or send information) from the Internet, the speed of the transfer of information will depend on many factors... In most cases the speed of your dial up access to the ISP's network is the only constant. After that, the performance of the Internet will vary, depending on the amount of traffic from your ISP's network to the Internet backbone, and then the amount of traffic on the Internet Backbone to wherever it is your information lives on the Internet.

Most people in Australia gather the greater percentage of their information from sources outsideAustralia. ISP's connected solely to the Australian public Internet backbone all have to share the available capacity to the International Internet. The end result of all this interaction is that there are a series of bottlenecks in the system. The access to your ISP's Network is running at the speed of your connection. Once you seek information outside the ISP's network, you have to compete with all the other users connected to your ISP at that time. Seeking information Internationally means you need to share available capacity with all users and ISP's to Telstra's Melbourne Operations Centre, and once there you need to share available capacity with all Australian Internet Users, ISP's, Educational, Military and Goverment organisations to access the local public Internet backbone's connection first to the USA, and then to any other points on the Internet around the world.

So your 28.8K dial up at the ISP, may loose some capacity as it leaves the ISP, and may loose some more capacity as it fights other users for access to the connections to Melbourne, and of course, will have another loss once it tries to get from Melbourne to the rest of the world.

This same argument of course is also true for users of permanent connections and high speed links to ISP's, or even directly to the Internet.

So... the question you all want to know is what can I do about it??

Click here to find out!