If it's taking too long to get to your favorite site, maybe the site itself is to blame. The most thorough way to find out is with Net.Medic, a freeware program that pokes around your Internet connection and builds up a record of how well a site performs over time.

Net.Medic's History Reports have an option that graphs the slowest sites, giving you a picture of a site's overall performance and letting you distinguish between a chronically slow site and a site that's just having a bad day. The three bars--Best Case, Average, and Worst Case--show how long the delays are on a site's good, average, and bad days. In the illustration below, the site with the monolithic block on the left of the screen is consistently slow. The rest of the sites in the screen just have bad spikes here and there. The site on the far right of the screen has only occasional delays.

Net.Medic's History Report graphs a Web site's speed over time.

If you consistently get response delays of 6 seconds or longer, you've found a chronically unresponsive site, and it's time to alert the site's Webmaster.

One solution for a site with occasional bad spikes is to visit during off-peak hours. Or you might try an offline browser, which fetches and moves pages to your hard drive before you actually want to read them. You could also contact the site's Webmaster and find out whether the site has a mirror, an exact copy created to divert traffic from the original site. Another option is to check whether your ISP uses a proxy server, a system that speeds access by locally caching pages from Web sites. If that's the case, make sure you're hooked up to it.

If the problems stem from your end--such as CPU or memory overload on your PC--Net.Medic's Health Report will tell you so. The report below points the finger at you (the client) and your PC.

Net.Medic's Health Report tells you what's slowing down your connections.

If you don't have Net.Medic, you can use Ping for a quick-and-dirty Web site check. Ping is a program that sends a 32-byte signal to the Web site's host server. Ping then records the time the server takes to respond. If that time creeps over 400 milliseconds (ms), either the Web site or your connection is sluggish. Please note: The farther you are from a major Internet hub, the slower your response times will be. If you're in Australia, for example, your Ping responses may be routinely slower than 400ms.

Here's how to use the Ping utility that comes with Windows 95/98 (if your ISP gave you another utility, check its documentation):

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Ping will show you the results of four tests. Any time less than 300ms is normal. A time longer than 400ms is considered slow. A "Request timed out" message means that the site didn't respond within 1 second, which indicates that either the server is not configured to respond to Ping or the connection is terribly slow.

Clock Your ISP
Is your modem as fast as your ISP's modems? Do the ISP's modems speak the same language as yours? If they don't match, you might be trapped in the slow lane unnecessarily.

Here's a quick way to find out. Dial in to your ISP. Then double-click the Dial-Up Connection icon in Windows 95/98's System Tray at the right of the Toolbar. Is the connection speed the fastest your modem can handle? If your modem can run at 56 kbps and your connection is 28.8 kbps, you're not using your modem's full potential.

Your ISP's modem may be slower than yours, or noisy phone lines may be reducing your connection speed. It used to be routine for ISPs to offer different-speed modems at different dial-up numbers, but 56-kbps modems are now a common standard. Still, it's worth checking your ISP's directory for faster dial-up numbers in your area.

It's also possible that your ISP's performance is just plain sluggish. They're not always as reliable as you (or they) would like. But don't blame your ISP until you've run Net.Medic for a few Web sessions so that you can tell who the real culprits are. Problems that you can lay at your ISP's door include failed connections and long delays in making a connection. If you're not satisfied with your service provider's reliability, get scientific. Keep notes on how many connections are dropped and how many redial attempts you make for an initial connection.

You can make a log of these by hand, but Net.Medic is the fairest and easiest way to monitor them. Look at the program's Service Provider report every couple of weeks to see results over time. Use this report to compare your ISP's proclaimed availability to its actual performance. In this report, the ISP did extremely well, exceeding the target availability, but not all ISPs are as reliable.

This report charts how often a particular ISP was unavailable.

If the number of busy signals and failures seems high and the speed at which you connect doesn't, it may be time to change ISPs. Shopping around for a new provider can be time-consuming but will be less so if you use our comparison of bargain ISPs to start your search.

Bargain With Your ISP
Your ISP isn't providing the service you want, but what can you do about it? You could call up the CEO and scream until you're blue in the face. That might make you feel better, but it won't help your real problem. And don't automatically assume that changing to a new ISP will help either: you could end up worse off than before. Instead, try to work with your ISP to get the service you want. But before you act, make sure your ISP's really at fault (see the "Clock Your ISP" section). Then try some of these strategies.

Check the Bulletins
Most ISPs issue bulletins or newsletters periodically, usually by email, and they're probably archived on the ISP's Web site as well. Look at the bulletins for those periods when you had problems with the service. If the ISP has come clean about network problems during these times--and has promised solutions--cut the company some slack until it has a chance to fulfill its promises. In addition to bulletins, also check the FAQ, Web-based help in the form of a list of frequently asked questions. If your problem is a common one, there may be a common solution.

Assemble Your Evidence
Before you call tech support, you need facts: times, dates, and details about the problems you've had. Failed calls, busy signals, DNS server failures, connection times consistently longer than 25 seconds--these are the details that work. To collect them, use a utility such as Net.Medic. This app assembles a staggering amount of data. If your ISP is slowing you down, Net.Medic will supply you with the info to build a case against your ISP.

Tell the Right People
Tech support phone lines aren't the best place to hash out substandard service problems. Scour the Web site for email support addresses and write to them for help. If all else fails, write to the Webmaster, usually at webmaster@your ISP's domain.

Escalate Slowly
If email doesn't get results within a reasonable amount of time, (three to seven days) then call your ISP, with the facts in front of you. That way, the tech support people won't dismiss you as a speed-obsessed crank, even if you are one.

Look for Better Service
If you're still not satisfied, look for another provider. Use our comparison of the best ISPs to start your search and save time.