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Most of the Web Really Sucks If You Have a Slow Connection (danluu.com)

Posted by msmash on from the who-is-to-blame dept.

Dan Luu, hardware/software engineer at Microsoft, writes in a blog post: While it's easy to blame page authors because there's a lot of low-hanging fruit on the page side, there's just as much low-hanging fruit on the browser side. Why does my browser open up 6 TCP connections to try to download six images at once when I'm on a slow satellite connection? That just guarantees that all six images will time out! I can sometimes get some images to load by refreshing the page a few times (and waiting ten minutes each time), but why shouldn't the browser handle retries for me? If you think about it for a few minutes, there are a lot of optimizations that browsers could do for people on slow connections, but because they don't, the best current solution for users appears to be: use w3m when you can, and then switch to a browser with ad-blocking when that doesn't work. But why should users have to use two entirely different programs, one of which has a text-based interface only computer nerds will find palatable?

19 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Most of the web really sucks by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No idea how your connection speed adds anything to this.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Most of the web really sucks by dugancent · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Autoplaying videos are the bane of my existence. Nothing should should autoplay, ever, and it shouldn't require a browser plugin to prevent it.

      --
      SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
    2. Re:Most of the web really sucks by Doke · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you use firefox, or a derivative, put this in your user.js file (or set it through about:config).

      user_pref("media.autoplay.enabled", false);
      user_pref("image.animation_mode", "once");

  2. no worries, i thought you Gnu! by nimbius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why does my browser open up 6 TCP connections to try to download six images at once when I'm on a slow satellite connection?

    i used to have this problem until i switched to Lynx. Now pesky things like popups and adware are a thing of the past! six streams indeed.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  3. Timeout by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why does my browser open up 6 TCP connections to try to download six images at once when I'm on a slow satellite connection? That just guarantees that all six images will time out!

    The problem is not opening 6 connections, or failure to retry, but a timeout that's too short.

  4. No one tests software on a slow connection by jfdavis668 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have the same problem with smartphone apps. If you don't have the highest LTE connection possible, the app is a pain to use. Go to a rural area, and you may not even get it to open. Web sites are the same way. They give developers super fast connections, and they develop applications that require that speed. They don't put them on slow networks and test to see if they are even useful on a basic level.

    1. Re:No one tests software on a slow connection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I remember WordPerfect 6. All we, as users and support techs, asked, was that they did not make it slow with new features and debris.

      They failed. Why?

      We find out in one of the responses from the dev team, via support: "All our developers use it too, and they have no problems with performance. Perhaps you need top upgrade your computer?"

      Well, we find out also that the dev team had 486DX2--66 machines with 16MB RAM. In an age when most attorneys' assistants were using 386 machines with 4MB RAM, maybe, and Windows 3.0/3.1. Yep, hanging on. A busy assistant would reboot twice a day. Had the WP dev team been testing even minimally on mainstream workstations, they would have known, and had a better answer, like "that's the price for state-of-the-art features, so suck it up and upgrade"

      How is this related to smartphone apps and network performance?

      First, the issue has nothing to do with user satisfaction. It is about 0. app infrastructure and 1. marketing.

      These apps that require a server infrastructure aren't going to be built to serve 'slow' users. Open connections spanning minutes are expensive. Adapting to network speed by stretching timeouts and optimizing data flow don't make any money for advertisers or the app itself, the devs are focused on new features, gadgets, and monetizing the product. The rural market is literally worthless to them.

      And since the apps are marketed to majorities, smaller populations out in the slow network space have no voice. And no money.

      Lightweight apps like Twitter (how much data DOES it take to send a 140 character message?) and SMS manage, but even maps fail spectacularly when they are used in 2G network spaces, and there are still a lot of those.

      My complaint is that in a metro area, during lunch, the congestion is so bad I lose data entirely. LTE4G is available, as well as UMTS, but when I lose I don't even get 2G - they just drop connections. Reboot my phone and get service for a few minutes, and then gone again. It's just 5500+ employees going out for lunch in a square mile. I have asked, and no carrier is immune to this. And building out capacity there isn't going to happen, because the congestion occurs for 3 hours a day, Monday-Friday. Nope, not worth it. When voice stats failing, maybe.

      Surprisingly, the PSTN had minimum service levels dictated by state legislation, and while the penalties were often minimal, there is NOTHING like this in cell service that I am aware of. AMPS and NAMPS didn't really have them, and CDMA/GSM apparently did not. Now that cell service is the only service for many, SLAs for service woudl be useful. I doubt they will be proposed, enacted, or enforced.

      And app performance will *never* be enforceable. Too many variables. I hear ya, rural performance is terrible, and every claim that it will be improved hinges on the cost benefit analysis. That will not change for a while, even with Band 12/700MHz/600MHz spectrum being deployed. Nope.

      Now Gigabit LTE and the next gen give us hope that the cell companies will build out and try to displace the incumbent wired ISPs, but I'm dreaming here. Or am I? Since rural American doesn't have wired ISPs, it may be overlooked during the transition to 'copious bandwidth'. Glad I don't live in the woods any more, though if I didn't have a great job I would move there and disconnect.

  5. Firefox max concurrent connections setting by JohnM4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can configure this setting in Firefox. It doesn't look like Chrome has a similar configuration.

    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Abou...
    network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server - default = 6

    Try setting this to 1.

    Source:
    https://support.mozilla.org/t5...

  6. Follow the money by Larry_Dillon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lot of what drives modern internet design is e-commerce. If you're on a slow connection, you probably don't have much money to spend, so why should anyone care? Or so the thinking goes....

    --
    Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
  7. Most of the web sucks period... by Red_Chaos1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even with fast Internet connections, websites are so bloated with ancillary scripts and tracking code and cross linking to 20 different various advertising and content servers that you get stuck waiting no matter what. CDNs helped but you're still hostage to X advertising companies one slow server because it's not on that CDN.

  8. Web page designers by Grand+Facade · · Score: 4, Insightful

    all show which side their bread is buttered on.

    When the advertising content loads first and the page rebuilds/rearranges itself 6 or 8 times and finally the content you want to see becomes visible or stabilizes enough to click a link.

    I think some of the pages are designed to do this on purpose.
    You get a glimpse of the content you are looking for and click on a link just as the page rebuilds itself and the link has changed to an ad and the cash register rings on a click through.

    --
    Rick B.
  9. Re:Most Web Browser Engines Are Open Source by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most web browser engines are open source. Go and modify one or many of them to handle slow connections better.

    And after you get done with that, you can take your car's engine apart and redesign it to get 400 miles per gallon.

  10. Welcome to the Digital Divide. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The digital divide in the US became most evident (to me) in this last election cycle.

    If you look at the page weights of 'conservative' vs 'liberal' news sites the former are much smaller and tailored to people on even a dial up, in large part because they know their demographic. Rural internet in the US flat out sucks. We have counties in my state, not more than 3 hours outside of Chicago that still have dialup as a viable option.

    Drudge Report loads amazingly fast. Huffington Post does not. Drudge was 1.13 MB in size with 44% of that images. (The site I used to analyze them was done with Drudge's 14 assets long before Huffington Post stalled at 220/222 assets.)

    The art of optimization seems to have disappeared, it made a small resurgence when web developers tried to optimize for the mobile web, but it doesn't look like most developers ever tried that hard.

    It's a closed feedback loop. Developers live in places with fast Internet, test in places with fast Internet and then don't understand what it's like anywhere else. Students on college campuses live with gigabit internet and Internet2 connections to peer universities. They move to cities that Comcast pays attention to.

    The best suggestion I have: Turn off images, configure the browser not to thread connections, and get involved in local government to get faster internet to your area.

  11. Important fix by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Be sure to run adblockers, stripping out adverts makes a big difference.

    But even slashdot is a big fat bloated pig. no reason at all to load everything and a giant pile of JS.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  12. Re:Most Web Browser Engines Are Open Source by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Funny

    And after you get done with that, you can take your car's engine apart and redesign it to get 400 miles per gallon.

    It's not hard to get a 400 MPG average. The trouble is, getting back to the top of the hill afterwards.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  13. Umm, no. by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ssh, and telnet work just fine over a slow connection and so does email so long as it doesn't have a load of attachments plus other protocols such as gopher. People did manage to use the internet over dial up before HTTP/HTML came along and sucked up as much bandwidth as it could!

  14. It isn't just advertising and Javascript by feenberg · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a hilarious (and sad) commentary on website bloat at http://idlewords.com/talks/web... that shows truely outrageous examples of this sin.

  15. Do you Know WHY it sucks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. Sites that play videos when the load.
    2. Sites that display the entire page for three seconds and then cover it with a full screen ad.
    3. Sites that constantly reorganize the page as it loads new ads.
    4. Sites that load ads FIRST instead of the actual content.

    Bottom line is the web sucks because Madison Avenue got a hold of it. They aren't content with placing an ad like they do in papers or magazines. They all in your face and FORCE your participation in message delivery. And before you even mention Ad Block, more and more sites simply refuse to load when you have that installed/enabled.

  16. https://alterslash.org by TheStickBoy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Be sure to run adblockers, stripping out adverts makes a big difference.

    But even slashdot is a big fat bloated pig. no reason at all to load everything and a giant pile of JS.

    I highly recommend https://alterslash.org it removes all the bloat from slashdot.org Thanks to Jonathan Hedley!