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Copyright©
Farmers Telephone Company
All Rights Reserved
Improving Your Access Speeds
The largest variables determining your access speed (the speeds at which pages
load, etc) are your modem speed, your computer's available RAM, and overall
Internet traffic. Here is a discussion of each:
Modem Speed: The slower your modem, the longer it will take
to transfer files (view web pages). You need to have at least a 14.4kbps modem
to use the Internet. A 28.8kbps modem will transfer pages twice as fast and
so on with faster modems still. Check the documentation on your modem to determine
it's maximum speed. As with all high-speed communication, connection speeds
will vary depending on telephone line quality, time of day, weather and other
factors.
RAM: Adding to your computer's memory (RAM) may significantly increase how fast your Web Browser and WWW pages load. These are large programs and files, and it seems that 16MB of RAM is about minimum for reasonable operation. If you currently have less than 16MB of RAM in your computer, you would notice significant improved performance with more memory.
Internet Traffic: As you know, use of the Internet is growing explosively. During times of high use, access times (and ability to access some sites at all) is greatly reduced. Peak periods tend to be between 4pm-10pm. During these hours you will notice much slower operation than at other times. This is simply due to the greatly increased traffic on the entire Internet "backbone" system. We continuously monitor our connections to the Internet to ensure they are sufficient to keep from creating "bottle-necks" for our subscribers. In most all cases peak traffic slow-downs are outside of the system we control.