The Internet Is Awful ⇥ awfulinternet.tumblr.com

John Degraft-Johnson has been testing the sites in the Alexa top 50, and his findings aren’t exactly surprising: a lot of sites load far too slowly, either because of the number of requests they make or the size of those requests.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with the inclusion of the China-based sites on here, though. Sure, Sina Weibo loads slowly outside of China, but that’s because its servers and users are located primarily within the country. On the other hand, it’s 2015, so geography should no longer cause issues with site speed.

Update: Wil Turner points out that the China-US slowness isn’t any better in the other direction:

@nickheer follow up on slow internet post & China: from other side of Pacific, all US hosted sites are significantly slower.

@nickheer from Seoul Hong Kong Tokyo lag is slight, real. From Shanghai tedious (if not blocked). Majors (Amazon) better, v. close to US.