What things influence page loading speeds?

antiskeptic

Hi,

I've 30mb UPC broadband which I use for general surfing. Whenever I Speedtest it it shows up as performing at around that speed. Speedtest gives a ping of 8ms and Pingtest a ping of 70-80ms and jitter of 2-4. I can't get a packet loss test done as there's some or other issue blocking that aspect of the test (Java latest loaded and firewall off doesn't solve it - which are the things Pingtest say can block the packet loss test)

My question is this. What kind of page load times should I be expecting for the broad range of sites - in the event of a healthy connection of that speed. On very rare occasions I've seen razor sharp page load times (sub 1 second) for a broad range of sites I'd visit regularly. But it's very much the norm that pages load between 2 - 5 seconds. Sometimes, on bad days, it takes longer.

What kinds of things influence the speed of page loads for the not-too-heavyweight likes of newpapers sites, youtube, email accounts, forums and the like?

It's about time I got to understanding and finally nailing this one.

Thanks for any input..

swoofer

say what your computer spec is, ie make, video card, memory, cpu speed, age, os. And the make of monitor, is it crt or lcd.

ED E

Lots of things, but especially ads. Install and add blocker and you can see a page load go from around 150 requests down to about 30.

Firefox’s optional Tracking Protection reduces load time for top news sites by 44%

In the same vein extensions and antivirus can play a big part. They usually run BEFORE the page is displayed to you, so if just one extension gets stuck trying to do something then the whole process can be held up.


If you use a smartphone on wifi are the page load times good?

antiskeptic

swoofer wrote: »

say what your computer spec is, ie make, video card, memory, cpu speed, age, os. And the make of monitor, is it crt or lcd.

It's a Dell Latitude E5540 laptop / 4MB / i5 4200 processor 1.6Ghz / Windows 7 service pack 1 / just over a year old. Not sure what video card in it (if that's the display adapter in devices then it just says Intel HD graphics family.

It runs marginally better when connected via ethernet cable to the router but not by any means razor sharp.

I'm having a bit of trouble with the wireless adapter - it connects and disconnects randomly on occasion - although I've had a bit of improvement since taking advice from an online tech forum. It's an Intel AC 7260 which I gather, seems to have problems in this dept.

I've a Nexus 7 as well and it loads faster than the laptop generally (same range of sites) but again I wonder why it doesn't load as fast at all times as the fastest loading I've seen (on the laptop, sub 1 second)

Perhaps I'm expecting too much and the load times I get aren't all that untypical?

Thanks!

antiskeptic

ED E wrote: »

Lots of things, but especially ads. Install and add blocker and you can see a page load go from around 150 requests down to about 30.

Any particular one you'd recommend? I'm running Firefox if that makes any difference?

In the same vein extensions and antivirus can play a big part. They usually run BEFORE the page is displayed to you, so if just one extension gets stuck trying to do something then the whole process can be held up.

These extensions on Firefox would be called add-on's? If so, I'll get rid of what I can do without (probably all of it). I did to a refresh of Firefox not so long ago and don't think I've add-ons. Even after the refresh, nothing much changed in the variability and time for pageloads.

I've got McAfee. Don't suppose I can do without the virus checker?

If you use a smartphone on wifi are the page load times good?

Inevitably better (on a nexus 7) than the laptop but that's because the laptop can drag on. The nexus isn't all that razor sharp either. Like I say, I've seen sub-1 second on the laptop so am wondering how, with fairly light duty surfing, I can get the general speed up.

I'll measure the Nexus times and post direct comparison for it, the laptop on wireless and on ethernet taken around the same session.

Cheers.

ED E

Yeah firefox calls them addons.

I'd just install google chrome + "adblock". Test with that and youll see if its browser related.

Also what spec is the PC?

antiskeptic

ED E wrote: »

Yeah firefox calls them addons.

I'd just install google chrome + "adblock". Test with that and youll see if its browser related.

The best ideas are the simplest ones. Will do.

Also what spec is the PC?

See a couple of posts upstream. Decent enough spec and a not much over a year old

antiskeptic

I did as you suggested ED E and installed Chrome and adblock.

In Firefox I notice that I get that circling blue egg timer (where the site logo comes to sit) whilst the page is loading. Typically, a page will part load - to the point where you can begin scrolling down, and bits get added in as the loading is completed. Even if loading reasonably fast, that egg timer rolls around

Chrome loads much faster: sometimes within a half a second. Sometimes the little egg timer goes on rotating even though the page has (as far as I can tell) loaded completely. It's certainly a more rapid browser.

Forgot to check whether I've adblock loaded in Firefox but will do that this evening.

My Nexus/android tablet is out of action but I do recall that it always loads pages faster than the laptop

mass_debater

For anyone using Adblock plus, I've recommended it for years but now they've sold out and took payments to allow Google and Microsoft ads through, I now use the Ublock Origin addon instead

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en

antiskeptic

Same laptop, same time. Firefox with adblock plus, Chrome with adblock

Firefox: (time load bulk of page / time to for circular egg timer to stop and sites logo to appear in tab)

Irish Times home page 2 /11
The Guardian 1/3
Done Deal 3/3
Entertainment.ie 2/3
Youtube 2/2.5


I've tried refreshing Firefox a couple of time in recent past and haven't much by way of add-on. Adblock is in fact the only one enabled during the above



Chrome (time to load bulk of page / time for circular egg timer to stop and site logo to appear in browser tab)

Irish Times home page 1/4
The Guardian 0.5 / 0.5
Done Deal 1/1
Entertainment.ie 2/2
Youtube 1/1


It's hard to be precise with times but Chrome is much faster. Is it simply a case of moving browser or is there something else - I have seen Firefox be fast on odd occasion (although I can't remember the last). I prefer steering clear of Google as much as I can..

ED E

Remove firefox completely, reboot. Run ccleaner, reboot. Install the latest firefox build from a fresh download. Should be almost as fast as chrome if not faster.

mass_debater

Another thing that can affect page loading times is DNS. I recommend everyone to get a better router that caches DNS. We spend lots of our time revisiting the same pages, caching DNS makes a huge difference as the DNS response returns from the router (after first visit) not a server a few hops away.

ItHurtsWhenIP

ED E wrote: »

Remove firefox completely, reboot. Run ccleaner, reboot. Install the latest firefox build from a fresh download. Should be almost as fast as chrome if not faster.

Would this clear the Firefox profile too?

If it did wipe it, then after the clean install, would restoring the profile slow Firefox back down again?

I back up my Firefox profile regularly, as I got fed up of accidentally deleting bookmarks for sites that were hard to find. So I just wonder if restoring the profile will slow things back down again.

ED E

MMFITWGDV wrote: »

Would this clear the Firefox profile too?

If it did wipe it, then after the clean install, would restoring the profile slow Firefox back down again?

I back up my Firefox profile regularly, as I got fed up of accidentally deleting bookmarks for sites that were hard to find. So I just wonder if restoring the profile will slow things back down again.

It should wipe everything. Depends on whats causing the slowdown.

keithclancy

DNS also makes a difference,

Find the fastest one for you and switch to that:

https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

mass_debater

keithclancy wrote: »

DNS also makes a difference,

Find the fastest one for you and switch to that:

https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm

Don't, use your providers, it's internal on their local network and is usually fastest. Only use another if you providers DNS is having a problem (or in my case if you want to use smart DNS service to bypass geographic restrictions)

keithclancy

mass_debater wrote: »

Don't, use your providers, it's internal on their local network and is usually fastest. Only use another if you providers DNS is having a problem (or in my case if you want to use smart DNS service to bypass geographic restrictions)

Hence why you should benchmark it, I stopped using UPCs DNS as another providers DNS is faster for me at least, the latency on your providers DNS may be lower but the performance may not be as good.

SmartDNS ... is not that fast.

mass_debater

keithclancy wrote: »

Hence why you should benchmark it, I stopped using UPCs DNS as another providers DNS is faster for me at least, the latency on your providers DNS may be lower but the performance may not be as good.

You should always use your providers unless they are having issues. You would be much better off with a local caching server. Using other DNS servers breaks geolocation and load balancing for a number of services, most importantly things hosted on CDNs

keithclancy wrote: »

SmartDNS ... is not that fast.

Can be fine if they have an Irish server (mine does) and you use a local DNS cache

keithclancy

mass_debater wrote: »

You should always use your providers unless they are having issues. You would be much better off with a local caching server. Using other DNS servers breaks geolocation and load balancing for a number of services, most importantly things hosted on CDNs



Can be fine if they have an Irish server (mine does) and you use a local DNS cache

A Benchmark will tell you what the best option is.

Been using XS4ALL DNS for around 5 years now .. much quicker than UPC