Dial-up downloads getting slower

By John Yaukey
Gannett News Service

Dazzled by the promise of broadband?

Neither are a lot of people.

But there may be another incentive to shell out the extra money for speedy broadband Internet service: conventional dial-up service is slowing down.

According to a recent analysis by Keynote Systems, an Internet measurement company, dial-up download times on the Web have increased by more than 30 percent, on average, since 1999.

In October 1999, the average time to download popular sites including Yahoo! (yahoo.com), Excite (excite.com) and Travelocity (travelocity.com) using a standard 56.6 Kbps (kilobytes per second) modem was 14.3 seconds.

A year later, in 2000, the average time had jumped to 16.8 seconds.

By January 2002, it had grown to 21.2 seconds.

"Can I notice much of a difference? I guess,'' said dial-up subscriber Bob Zipf, of Scarsdale, N.Y. "Is it worth paying $40 or more a month for broadband service? Not yet. I just can't see paying the extra money. But we'll have to see what happens.''

Engineers are working on improved data compression techniques in an effort to cram more data through dial-up lines, but they're just not able to keep pace with the growing complexity of modern Web sites.

Several years ago, the typical Web site contained only half a dozen images and some text. Now they often contain dozens of pictures, sometimes with one or more embedded Java scripts used for dynamic page components such as animations and scrolling text marquees.

These data-intensive pages can contain up to 10 times more code than a simple text-based page.

"A lot of Web sites have clearly been posted without much concern for anything but cramming on as much content as possible,'' said Daniel Theaker, founder of Canadian Web design firm ScoreWorks (scoreworks.com).

If, like Zipf, you simply don't find broadband compelling or cost-effective enough yet, there are steps you can take to keep your dial-up access times down:

• New V.92 telephone modems promise faster download times than the conventional V.90 dial-up modems — sometimes 30 to 40 percent faster. Many Internet service providers, however, have been slow to adopt the new standard because of the cost to upgrade their networks. Check with your ISP before you buy one.
• Use the Internet at off-peak hours. Late afternoon and early evening are often the most busy times.