Web Site Fatness/Slowness Does Not Mean Your Computer Is Slow

Some people may be under the impression that if a web site loads slowly and/or causes your browser to crash that it might be your computer’s fault it happened.

Not necessarily.

There are several things that people interpret as a fault with their computer when in fact it isn’t.

Things that are not your fault when problems happen loading web sites

Web site server issues

PCMech even suffers from this periodically (it is a largely visited site). It happened yesterday. When sites go slow due to server issues, that has nothing to do with your internet connection whatsoever.

The best way to find out if a site is having problems is to perform a Twitter search. This does not require a Twitter account at all. For example, if your were having a problem with Gmail, search Twitter for that term. If you see a bunch of other people having similar issues, then you know it’s not your fault.

And yes, Twitter itself has another site that checks this.

Flash

Many people hate Flash with a passion. Flash will crash any browser. It will even crash your OS at times. Most of us use Flash when we view video content on the internet. Even if you have a brand new multi-thousand dollar Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM in it, Flash will at times cause OS X to have a kernel panic, forcing a restart of the OS. Not even a BSD-based UNIX is immune to this (and you can’t get any more stable than UNIX).

Flash has never had an in-program way of disabling it. Either it’s installed and on-demand whenever a request from a web site is made, or you have it uninstalled completely as there is no "off" option. Fortunately there are add-ons like Flashblock for Firefox that can temporarily disable Flash. This allows the option of having it enabled only when you want it to be. It’s sad that an add-on like that needs to exist when there should be an in-program way of doing it, but it’s better than nothing.

Slashdotting/Digg Effect

If a particular article on a web site triggers a massive response from the internet as a whole, an onslaught of requests hit the web server and will at times temporarily take it offline due to the sheer amount of incoming traffic. The original phrase for this effect was called Slashdotting, but it is also known as Digg effect. Either means the same thing in general conversation.

When this happens, the site you’re trying to get to will either load very slowly or not at all until the traffic goes back down to normal levels.

OS/Browser limitations

Certain web sites will make too many network requests. This in combination with an OS limitation either by bug or design will render your internet connectivity unusable for a minute or two.

The best example of this is Google Maps using the Windows operating system. That web site uses many different servers in order to display map data in your browser. If you zoom very quickly around the map, this makes so many network requests that Windows will literally lock any further requests and make it appear that your internet connection isn’t working. This is incorrect. It is working, but Windows is specifically designed to limit network requests for security purposes. The solution is to close the browser, wait 60 to 90 seconds, and your internet connection will start working again.

To date, I have only been able to replicate this rare instance using the Google Maps web site. And yes, it still happens.

Is this a fault of Windows? No. It’s a fault of Google Maps. Other mapping web sites never have this issue. Only on Google Maps (and not Google Earth) does this occur.

The browser itself is also purposely designed to only accept a limited amount of network (as in http) requests at any given time.

In Internet Explorer 8, the maximum concurrent connections to a single host allowed is 6. This is an improvement over previous editions of IE where the setting is 4. This is yet another reason to use the most current version of IE, should you use that browser.

In Firefox 3.5.3 (the latest version at the time of this writing), the maximum concurrent connections to a single host is also 6. However it should be noted that the maximum total http connections in Firefox is 30, with a per-server of 15. The 6 applies to the persistent connections per server (which is what matters the most).

You can see these settings by typing about:config and searching for the term connection, like this:

I strongly recommend against modifying these settings. Increasing the maximum connections or other "max" values for other connection settings ordinarily will not increase your transfer speeds at all.

Webmaster error

This mainly happens on personal web sites. If a the owner of a web site is using WordPress for example, and installs a WP plugin that doesn’t exactly work correctly which causes "weird" things to happen to the site, this is obviously not your fault.

"Showpiece" web sites

These are web sites that are so full of Flash (of course) that there’s actually a pretty good chance it will crash your browser unless you have a fairly fast computer.

A classic example of this is the Transformers Movie web site.

This web site is absolutely horrible. It will bring your web browser to its knees. When you click "Enter Site" it will purposely force full screen. Horrible, horrible, horrible. You will hate this web site in very short order. The only thing that will save your browser from crashing is if it’s the current version of IE or Firefox (both have well-written code to accommodate for super-bloat sites with craptastic Flash).

Web sites like these are showpieces and nothing more. They serve no purpose other than to be glitzy and have plenty of "wow" factor. Said another way, useless.

If the site hoses your browser, I sincerely apologize in advance.

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http://howto-ubuntu.com eli
This is a common problem here at the library. Patrons using our public access computers will complain about the machine being too slow, or not working at all when in fact there is another problem. Funny enough, the problem is usually our county website being down, and that is our homepage for our browsers. So, a patron gets a 404 error, or a slow loading page, and they get upset because the computer we put them on is slow or doesn’t work. This causes our staff no shortage of stress.
joshp1
Another site that uses to much flash is discovery channel’s site and their mythbusters page if people want to add styled content their’s dhtml or just css to play movies use the embed tag

James M. Dean
Sometimes Discovery Channel is a disaster and sometimes it’s great. It’s pretty hit or miss on my old computer. (LOL)

David K.
Agree…despise sites with Flash overload. Flash is a great technology and has many uses. Unfortunately, a lot of developers are under the impression if there’s not Flash flying around then the site isn’t effective. Poor, poor designs…
U-AL
Good article Rich.
Have you used the Flash Manager? I used it to block flash cookies but then flash
doesn’t work. Maybe it is a useless program. Flush Flash will remove Flash cookies. I do use Flash Block with
Firefox. I also use the Greasemonkey script Flash Quality Changer, but I can’t tell If the script is working or not.
Here is the Flash Manager http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html
Thanks, Al
P.S. Did you mean Fa(s)tness/Slowness ?

http://www.menga.net Rich Menga
Haven’t tried the Flash Manager, will have to check that out.
I did mean “Fatness.” If a site is chock full of too much scripting and useless Flash, the site is fat and needs to go on a diet to make it easier on the users who use it.