TRUE! TRUE! TRUE! FT is the usually one of the slowest sites around. It seemed to have started about the time of "upgrade" to 5.0 or somewhat sooner. Unless you use Opera as a browser, you traded through-put for really ugly-color. If you use Opera, then FT is still slow but at least it is black on white.

Some of you seem to confuse the modem connection speed (usually 28k-56k) with the actual modem through put speed. The modem connection speed is the MAXIMUM speed (in kbits/sec) you can obtain, while through put is the ACTUAL speed of download or upload in kbytes/sec. At approx 9 kbit = 1 kbyte, a 48k connection will max out to 5.3 kbytes/sec. File transfer programs usually indicate this type of speed. A 56k modem is actually limited to 53k by the FCC.

Having said that, in Delaware I use a cable modem having an average connection speed of 1500 kbits/sec and average through put of 20-150 kbytes/sec. This is equivalent to a T-1 line and VERY FAST in the home WWW arena. Most sites download here at approx 25 kbytes/sec. For example, the NYT downloaded this am at 32 kbytes/sec. WOW!

FT, when it is actually working, usually is in the 1-3 kbytes/sec area. This is VERY VERY SLOW. In the famous words of G Gorden Liddy who I recently heard driving back from DCA, "It must be that cheap East German transmission crap the station is using".

Hopefully what I said above is correct and understandable by most if not all. If not, hopefully those who know this stuff will shine their lantern and correct it. I am not an electrical engineer nor a computer system analyst, nor do I play one in real life. Just trying to help.

Note to Randy P: IMHO the actual limiting problem is either with your local lines, your server or your software

[This message has been edited by MisterNice (edited 11-14-1999).]