Forum speed on Mobile Broadband

[AlanS]

Hi

I have only just joined and have found that when I try to use the forum with my laptop and mobile broadband dongle it is quite slow to load pages.

It seems to be down to that large lovely, The Art of Sound image at the top of each page. Most times you can see it slowly being drawn as it is down loaded.

Loading this Post New Thread page took several (over 10 seconds) to load.

When I am at work it is fine and I guess most decent broadband users would not even notice. Any chance of a lighterweight version people opt in to using?

Makes for a very patience developing experience.

Thanks for listening

[Beechwoods]

Thanks for your comments Alan.

There are a few ways you can improve your situation.

The most extreme is to use the Archived version of the Forum though to be honest this is a crap interface designed mainly so search engines can have an easy time.

Alternatively you should think about trying different browsers. I'm not sure what you're using at the moment but I would strongly recommend you try out Google Chrome, or the latest version of Firefox. Google Chrome is particularly snappy with the Java elements of V-Bulletin and both it and Firefox are optimised to get the most out of your connection, using clever caching and pre-fetching of pages in idle time before you actually click.

The last option would be to use a Web Accellerator. These were particularly popular in the days of dial-up. The one I used to use, Sqweez isn't around any longer as far as I can tell, but http://fastun.com/ seems to do a similar job, basically acting as a proxy that compressing web-pages on the fly before you download them.

To be honest, I regularly use the forum on my Windows Mobile phone, which uses the Opera browser, via 3G, EDGE or plain old GSM and page loading is fine. I strongly suspect that a different browser may give you a bit of a better experience.

Art Of Sound isn't really optimised for slow connections. The rich visual and pleasing design is something we prize and that sets us apart from the competition, so it's not really something we're keen to give up, but we'll always try to help when it comes to making the most of the site

Hope this helps.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I have no problem at all with 3g on the iPhone, if you are using firefox already got to thier website and make sure to upgrade to 3.6... A few people started suffering with 3.5xxx

[Alex_UK]

The large logo/header is 67.4 kb - that won't be causing your problem Alan - I would agree that some of the gallery threads or threads with lots of pictures will take a while, but I'm not sure the normal forum should be giving you grief - I've got an O2 mobile broadband dongle, and the service varies very much dependant on location, so maybe that is something that is contributing? Hope it gets better for you.

[Werner Berghofer]

It seems to be down to that large lovely, The Art of Sound image at the top of each page.

Large? Yes, of course! But lovely? In my opinion that logo is much too high. It didn’t take long until I decided to use my browser’s adblocker to gracefully hide it completely

[Rare Bird]

Where u been for 3 months then Wernerbergs

[Werner Berghofer]

Where u been for 3 months then Wernerbergs

Visiting daily, but posting very rarely.

[AlanS]

To be honest, I regularly use the forum on my Windows Mobile phone, which uses the Opera browser, via 3G, EDGE or plain old GSM and page loading is fine. I strongly suspect that a different browser may give you a bit of a better experience.

I've had a look at AoS using Opera Mini on my phone and yes it is sprightly. Noticed the large image is reduced to a tiny thumbnail which may help a bit. The good thing about Opera Mini is that it's server builds the page and sends a highly compressed version to your phone so it will beat using a normal 3G mobile dongle with the laptop.

Cannot change the browser because the laptop is supplied by my work and they don't like you messing (makes support very uneasy).

Just have to be patient and enjoy the slowly unfolding image each time when not at my desk.

Thanks for the suggestions though

[Mark Grant]

Hello Alan,

Are the phone that browses OK and 3G dongle both on the same network ?

If the dongle connection is really slow remember to turn off automatic windows updates on the laptop as if windows decides to download updates in the background on a slow connection this will really slow down your browsing experience.
The same with antivirus software updates, best to switch of automatic updates and update from a real connection rather than the dongle.

Also try the laptop upstairs and near a window to see if you get a better signal.

I often use a 5 metre USB extension cable so the dongle can be placed in a good signal area such as near a window etc.

this website
http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/

has the location of mobile phone transmitters so you can find the location to help decide which side of the house or window might have the best signal etc.
Dont try that on a slow dongle connection though as will be too slow.

I have an external 3G aerial and can get a steady 2 meg connection with a 3 network dongle.
This is faster than my home broadband although took some time to gets all the bits purchased and get the aerial aimed correctly.

Mark.

[James G]

Hey Alan, I know this is an old issue by now, but I would like to add that since it is a company laptop it's probably not the website or your browser.

If you work for large firm with secrets to protect you probably have to connect by 'tunneling' in using special software and they have your connection going through a proxy, firewall, and web filter. I bet you have a securID don't you?

Also the slow loading logo might just be a symptom of some other element on the page, like the google ads or something. You could take it up with your local support and use some other site like Yahoo Finance as an excuse. If you have good honest local support maybe they could at least explain to you what could possibly cause some loading hangups.