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In article <[log in to unmask]>, Peter Wilson <[log in to unmask]> writes >Hi all (experts in particular) > >There has been lots of correspondence recently about the Internet, WWW and >connections in general, e.g. ISDN, cable modems, etc. Please forgive my >ignorance on these matters but isn't the speed at which pages, especially the >newer animated ones, are displayed on one's screen mainly dependent upon the >slowest link in the chain, e.g.. port speed, processor, video card and VRAM. This isn't always the slowest link. It's the slowest link for connecting to your own ISP, but when surfing the web, communications back and forth between your ISP and remote sites may work out slower. > >I have experience of using both a 486 and 14.400 modem and now use a Pentium >90 and 28.800 modem but I must say that I have not found any increase in speed >staggering - the main delays seem to occur whilst the web site is first >located and then a reply awaited. On upgrading your modem you _should_ have seen an increase in maximum speeds during collection of data which is held by your ISP itself, eg downloading newsgroups or FTP from your ISP's own sites. But on surfing the web, the improvement might be less noticeable. One thing that may improve web-surfing speeds is if your ISP operates an effective cache (and you have set your browser to use it). Then, at least when accessing popular sites that other customers have visited recently, you only have to get the data from the ISP and not the remote source. Choosing your time of day for surfing also helps - some US-based servers tend to clog up when America awakes. I wonder if contributors to the thread on comparisons between ISPs can offer any information about relative cache effectiveness? IMHO, the Demon cache works quite well. -- Hilary Curtis, Executive Director, BMA Foundation for AIDS http://www.bmaids.demon.co.uk Tel: 0171 383 6315 Fax: 0171 388 2544 BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JP, UK %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%