cable vs adsl

matty2767

i called this topic cable vs asdl but after writing i wondered whether it actually has anything to do with this at all.. let me explain.

i recently went round to a friends house who has wired cable broadband on a xp system which is older than mine.

i am running vista on an adsl max service with 5.5mbps average connection.

when he was flicking through the websites his was alot faster than mine. his pages displayed almost instantly whereas mine take about 5 -10 seconds to fully display. i dont think there is anything wrong with my download speed because i can download files with a speed of over 550kb/sec.

i know that ie7 has the phising filter which must have a hit on how quickly pages display but apart from turning this off is there anything else i can do to speed things up?

thanks in advance

matt

GoofyGAT

Try clearing your Internet cache+cookies first, then (if no joy) experiment with the amount of space you've allocated for Internet cache (Temporary Internet files).

Try out an alternative browser like Firefox/Opera & see if it makes any difference.

May be a silly question, but were you browsing the same websites/pages in both the PCs? G

superscaper

GoofyGAT wrote: »

Try clearing your Internet cache+cookies first, then (if no joy) experiment with the amount of space you've allocated for Internet cache (Temporary Internet files).

Try out an alternative browser like Firefox/Opera & see if it makes any difference.

May be a silly question, but were you browsing the same websites/pages in both the PCs? G

There could also be an added factor that the friend's pc was displaying mostly already cached pages rather than live pages.

matty2767

yeah i had wondered if virgin used sometype of proxy server. he hadnt used the net before and i was showing him how. the first page we went to was the bbc website and i thought that seemed very quick. when i go there it takes 5 secs to display the page.

i did try and use safari (apple) but it didnt seem to make that much difference so i uninstalled it again plus it didnt appear to have the same functinaility as ie7.

superscaper

To be honest I think cable is faster anyway and doesn't suffer in quite the same way as adsl with "distance from exchange".

spud17

You don't state your mates BB speed, but I'm one of the satisfied VM users and am (touch wood ) well impressed even at 2mbit.
Mse pages are not the quickest to load but probably take 2 or 3 seconds.

As well as the other suggestions have you tried an optimiser for example something like

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

Also what security are you using? Lots of posts regarding Norton etc slowing PCs

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=507025

GoofyGAT

spud17 wrote: »

You don't state your mates BB speed, but I'm one of the satisfied VM users and am (touch wood ) well impressed even at 2mbit.

I don't think BB speed is the issue here (if that's what you're implying) as 1. the OP can download fairly quickly, 2. this shouldn't make any difference on 'small' pages like the BBC website homepage.

I'm on VM 2Mb too & very satisfied - can't go wrong for £10 a month . G

spud17

I was meaning the cable speed, the friend could be on a higher speed although I don't think that's the main issue.

matty2767

no the chap is on the 2mb plan.

maybe it is just the hit that vista + ie7 has over winxp + ie6. he probably has a higher spec machine for running that combination than i do for vista.

i am using a security program as well: f-secure. i will have a look at those optimzers though.

bunking_off

Who's your ISP?

The focus that people put on the speed from the local exchange to their home is at times a little misplaced. The performance will depend also on the contention ratio they're using / size of endlink from the ISP to BT network, and the bandwidth out of the ISP to the backbone providers.

This said, reference was made to popular sites like the BBC, which really should be cached at the ISP. Sounds like the difference is either down to dodgy caching there, or as you've said the overhead of Microsoft's "advances".

matty2767

i am with bt. my actual download speeds are fast. just downloaded the latest ati drivers which are 37meg in less than 1 min. it is just web browsing that seems slow.

i have turned off the automatic phising filter and cleared the temp internet files and it has sped up a bit. maybe i expect too much.

cheers anyway