{"id":8183,"date":"2020-08-04T16:17:28","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T22:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8183"},"modified":"2020-08-04T16:17:28","modified_gmt":"2020-08-04T22:17:28","slug":"the-need-for-speed-23-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8183","title":{"rendered":"The Need for Speed, 23 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kathryn Whitenton<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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23 years ago, the internet was quite different from the one we use today. Google didn\u2019t exist yet, fewer than 20% of U.S. households <\/span>had internet access<\/a><\/u>, and those who did were using a <\/span>dial-up<\/a><\/u> <\/span>connection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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It\u2019s no wonder that <\/span>people complained about slow speeds on every website we tested<\/a><\/u> <\/span>back then, because the internet and the computers used to access it were painfully slow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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What <\/span>is<\/em> <\/span>surprising is that, despite today\u2019s much faster network speeds and computer processors, people using the internet today are still plagued by the exact same frustration: slow websites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The Internet Is Faster, but Websites Aren\u2019t<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/h2>\n

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You might be wondering whether people simply don\u2019t notice how much faster today\u2019s sites are because their expectations have increased over time. While it\u2019s true that people\u2019s estimates of wait times are sometimes exaggerated, in this case it\u2019s not just a matter of distorted perceptions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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For the past 10 years, <\/span>Httparchive.org<\/a><\/u> <\/span>has recorded page load times for 6 million popular websites. (Httparchive.org is a part of the InternetArchive.org, whom you may know as the folks behind the WayBack Machine). The results are not encouraging: for webpages visited from a desktop computer, the median load time hasn\u2019t improved. <\/span>Today\u2019s websites aren\u2019t that much faster than they were 10 years ago.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathryn Whitenton: 23 years ago, the internet was quite different from the one we use today. Google didn\u2019t exist yet, fewer than 20% of U.S. households had internet access, and those who did were using a dial-up connection. It\u2019s no wonder that people complained about slow speeds on every website we tested back then, because the internet and the computers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8184,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183\/revisions\/8184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}