DSL Speed For An Instant

[casingpoint]

Stuck in the boonies with a land line hookup to the net, bootup of chron.com has been slower and slower lately.

This morning when I clicked on the bookmark Ye Olde Houston Chronicle home page up in a flash. I mean like half a second. Normally this may take up to 45 seconds at 36.8 kbs.

Then it was back in the slow lane. Slow has not always been the case with the Chronicle and may other sites, now also quite slow.

Navigating the site has also been slow, with lots of grinding and crunching coming from the monitor, which I assume to be disc activity.

I'm running AVAST, although for some time did not have any antivirus installed.
Regularly run ADWARE and SPYBOT.

Is there an explanation for the sudden momentary boost in download time? This has never happened before.

Thanks in advance for all replies.

[Stupid]

Follow these to clear up any crap that you don't need.
1. Reboot your computer
2. hit F8 right after the BIOS screen and before you see "Windows XP"
3. it should bring up a list of start up options
4. start in Safe Mode
5. in Safe Mode, Start, Run, msconfig
6. in Services tab, check "Hide All Microsoft Services," disable all
7. in Startup tab, disable all
8. Reboot your computer

After you have done the above, go to Start, Run, type in CMD then OK. This brings up a black windows. Within the window, type in this and hit enter:
ping http://www.yahoo.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; -t

This will give you result similar to this:

Pinging http://www.yahoo-ht3.akadns.net" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; [69.147.76.15] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=56
Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=56
Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=56
Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=56

What this means is that the "ping" similar to a sonar sends 32 bytes of information to http://www.yahoo.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and it takes about 55-62 miliseconds to get a reply from http://www.yahoo.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Post your result and let's see.

[atxgun]

There could also be ISP level caching for frequently requested pages.

[TxDrifter]

I live in the boonies myself, but never have used dial-up out here. Originally had satellite, but it has very high latency. I now just use a wireless card from Verizon, had one from Sprint. You can get a router to plug it into and connect multiple computers to it. A LOT faster than dial-up, but it does have a monthly 5GB limit. If I have to download anything large I go into Magnolia to one of the three restaurants with free WiFi.

[pbwalker]

Follow these to clear up any crap that you don't need.
1. Reboot your computer
2. hit F8 right after the BIOS screen and before you see "Windows XP"
3. it should bring up a list of start up options
4. start in Safe Mode
5. in Safe Mode, Start, Run, msconfig
6. in Services tab, check "Hide All Microsoft Services," disable all
7. in Startup tab, disable all
8. Reboot your computer

I would not recommend doing this, as this will disable everything you have set to start up when the computer boots, including any antivirus or antispyware software you have installed.

Imo, there's no need to do this, as it is not going to speed up his dialup internet, and that was the point of this thread.