Why Is My Internet So Slow Network and Firewall Issues

So you've upgraded. You've got the fastest CPU, tons of RAM, and the latest cable modemized high-speed Internet service. You're ready to read e-mail and news faster than anyone else on the web, right?

Not so fast. Heh, get it? Not so fast? Ehh...

There's more to fast connection speeds than just more and better hardware. The Internet is exactly what its name says it is: an interconnected network of computers, and believe it or not, those computers can slow your network access down to the point where a 1200 baud phone-coupler modem the size of an espresso machine would be an upgrade.

Let's start with the not-so-good stuff. Any computer plugged in to the Internet is "visible" to every other machine through something known as an "IP Address." This is basically a temporarily-assigned "phone number" for your computer so other machines on the network know where to send data that you've requested. When another machine "dials" your computer's IP address, your computer is supposed to answer. When your computer visits Hubpages, it "dials" the IP address of the Hubpages server, which in turn sends articles back to your machine using the same address.

Well, what happens if 1,000 computers all call your machine at once? Your network connection becomes "saturated" and can't be used for anything else. This can also happen in reverse. If your machine is pouring data out on to the network at maximum speed, it can slow your connection speed down considerably.

The first possibility is pretty remote. Very few client machines are ever affected by what is known as a "denial of service" or DoS attack. The reverse situation, however, is far from unlikely. Viruses, trojans and all manner of ugly stuff can reprogram your machine to start sending e-mail or floods of nonsense data out on to the network if they aren't controlled. Any machine should be equipped with a firewall and both anti-virus and anti-spyware should be installed and kept up-to-date.

When client machines like individual user PCs visit a web site, a number of things have to happen before the data on that site can be displayed. First on this list is what is known as a "DNS Lookup." The protocols that run the Internet itself have no idea what Hubpages.com means. They do know what an IP address is, though. DNS, or the Domain Name Service, is what connects web site names like Hubpages.com to an IP address so your computer knows what number to dial. DNS is really just a giant address book.

Well, the problem is that DNS servers can sometimes get overloaded and slow down. Since client machines must get IP addresses before they can go to a site, this can slow down the network for some users and stop it for others. Most Internet service providers have a number of DNS servers on their network, but if they are slow or off-line, web browsers will report "The site could not be found." This doesn't mean that ESPN decided to turn off their web site. It just means your computer can't find an address book with the correct IP address.

Once a client machine has an IP address, the next step is to get the web site's server to respond quickly. Most web sites are now construced with data from multiple locations. Some have RSS feeds provided by blogs. Some have advertisements. Others are aggregation services which bring together news from a variety of sources. Each of the servers providing data to that web page has to be looked up through DNS, then called for the data. If one of them is slow to respond, it will slow down the entire page.

A similar problem is often found in the routers between a given client and a given web site. Many requests for data on the web are routed through a dozen or more machines, any one of which might be down for maintenance, or overloaded. This kind of problem can be identified with a utility called "traceroute" which is part of the standard network utilities in most operating systems. Traceroute asks all machines between a client machine and a given web address to respond with their address and the time it took for them to reply to the traceroute. If a machine is not responding, it can often be the cause of a network slowdown.

One way to speed up individual web pages is to turn off loading of things like Adobe Flash or images. Not only does this reduce the amount of data being transmitted, but it often saves the page from having to go to other servers to find data in the first place. The fewer "calls" a client machine has to make, the faster the page will load.

Another possibility for those who are primarily interested in reading news stories or fiction, for example, is to use a text-only browser like Lynx. Byte for byte, graphics, Adobe Flash, sound and video are several orders of magnitude more substantial loads to transmit across the network than the text on most web pages. Lynx runs in a plain terminal and simply ignores everything that isn't text. Otherwise it works exactly the same as a normal browser. On a clear high-speed connection, Lynx runs incredibly fast.

Knowing a little about how the network works in combination with an optimized machine can go a long way towards improving network performance and avoiding common problems with slow-speed e-mail and web sites.