TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: calculating web download times From:Sandy Harris <sandy -at- storm -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 14 Jan 2001 17:55:06 -0500
Peter Kleczka wrote:
>
> Hello
>
> I'm looking for a method to calculate
> the amount of time it takes a webpage
> to download from the server to the
> user's machine (looked in the archive
> and didn't see this info there).
A rough first approximation is bytes/sec downloaded = one tenth of bits/sec
data rate. There are 8 bits in a byte, but there's some overhead.
So on a 56K bit/sec modem, you cannot get more than about 5.6 K bytes/sec.
That means, if you want your pages readable by people on those modems, you
should keep the size down. Is that nice 30K graphic worth 5 seconds per
display of customer irritation? I doubt it.
On an ADSL or cable line (1 to 3 megabits depending where you are) not more
than 100 to 300 K bytes downloaded.
Of course, you can get less. If there are 1000 people downloading from
your website, I get the minimum of:
the limit of my connection
1/1000th of the limit of your connection
1/1000th of how fast you can get data off your disk
whatever the worst bottleneck between you and me lets through
...
e.g. in theory, I should get up to 100 K here, but 70 is the highest I've
seen and 20 to 30 common.
Also, it often takes the two systems a while to figure out details
and get the connection right. I often see a large download start at 20-odd
K bytes/second and gradually work its way up to 60 or 70 after a while.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Develop HTML-Based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 ($100 STC Discount)
**WEST COAST LOCATIONS** San Jose (Mar 1-2), San Francisco (Apr 16-17) http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001
Conference East, June 4-5, Baltimore/Washington D.C. area. http://www.pdfconference.com or toll-free 877/278-2131.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
