Internet speed: What you don’t know about the web

[Commentary] High capacity broadband networks are often touted as the cornerstones of a blazingly fast web experience, but this isn’t really the case. The other factors that influence the web experience are the capacity of web servers to respond to user requests and the ability of browsers and end user devices to render and display web pages. At the speeds that most Americans use today, these non-network factors account for 50 to more than 90 percent of the wait time to load web pages. Consequently, increasing network capacity has a minimal effect on the user experience of surfing the web. In fact, upgrading from a 10 Mbps broadband connection to a faster one is unlikely to produce a perceptible effect most of the time. The dominant role that non-network factors play in web speed suggests that the common narrative that demands radical changes in broadband policy to create incentives for faster networks is not entirely based on reality. This is disturbing.

[Bennett is a visiting fellow at AEI]