1. According to this report from December, 78% of the US internet users are on broadband. That means 22% are not.
2. "Broadband" isn't always fast. I still get plenty of sluggish downloads over RoadRunner. Cable-based broadband has finite bandwidth that gets shared among the users on a particular line. So if you're on RR and everyone in your neighborhood is checking their email and surfing YouTube, your transfers will be a lot slower than they are at 2am.
3. Similarly, a lot of broadband connections are getting used through wireless routers, which I believe shares throughput among users. So the more people sharing an access point--say, at Starbucks, a university building, a hotel, or an apartment building--the slower downloads are going to be.
Just because "everybody is on broadband," that doesn't mean we get to bloat our pages and nobody will notice.
Use up whatever bandwidth you need to, but don't be gratuitous about it. Avoid Flash unless it's actually serving a purpose, and optimize pages so that the actual content loads quickly enough to keep user's attention. Carefully consider who your audience is, and decide how willing you are to turn away those who are on slower connections and will be turned off by overweight pages.
Last edited by codescribbler; May 6, 2007 at 21:23.
Reason: Used wrong word
Originally Posted by Dan Schulz
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