With the increasing use of the internet for business and pleasure the infrastructure has to expand and adapt. So what does this have to do with your website? Besides getting ready for more business by increasing your promotional tactics you have to make sure the path to your website is an easy path with few stops lights. They are other areas where your website may need improving to speed up it browsing ability but in this article I will focus on the lines that connect your website to your potential customers.

On the internet surfers are always in a hurry to get information. If you make them wait too long, with a click of the mouse they can go somewhere else.

Most websites hosted on services such as Angelfire, Tripod, GeoCities, HyperMart, FreeYellow will see the greatest increase in how fast their website downloads. With free webpages comes many hassles. You are in a group of many hosted on a very high trafficked server and not to mention the hosting companies advertising placed on your site for this free service. This combination can really slow your pages and cause you to lose potential customers who didn't want to wait.

If your website is not hosted on a free webpage server the cause of the slowness could be your graphics, the way your site is laid out, where your visitors are coming from, your isp, a slow down in a router on the way, time of day when your site receive it's most traffic. One of these is the culprit. However, this article focuses on the path it takes for you to visit your site and the path it takes your visitors which you have no control over. Similar to a highway, sometimes information can come to a standstill and case a slow down. Routers, hubs, high speed lines all work together to make sure the highway always runs at peak performance and traffic flows are green lights all the way. At certain times of the day traffic will increase and information will slow minimally or drastically. In my case I had a bottleneck on a router not under my control.

Instructions to help you see where your bottleneck may be or will be.

First do a tranceroute from your local ISP to your server (where your website is located)

PC with Windows 95, use the following instructions:

1. Open a DOS shell on your computer.
2. At the prompt:
   

C:\WINDOWS>

type the command: tracert 'your domain name' or 'ip address'

C:\WINDOWS> tracert 'your domain name' or tracert 'ip address'

SCREEN SHOT

To send a copy of the traceroute to your support staff, type the above followed by a greater-than-sign. This 'sends' the output to a file named trace.txt.

C:\WINDOWS> tracert 'domain name' > trace.txt tracert 'ip address' > trace.txt

This saves the file trace.txt under the directory WINDOW

SCREEN SHOT

C:\WINDOWS\trace.txt

traceroute from my dial-up connection in Victoria, B.C. Canada to my website in Millersville, MD USA, 30 hops max, 38 byte packets

Compare the chart above and below and you will notice that connections are usually stronger when surfing within the same continent.

traceroute from Prowebsite.com in Millersville, MD, USA to One.net in Cincinnati, OH, USA (198.30.92.106), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets

1	rain (198.180.60.133	0 ms	0 ms	20 ms
2	oar-gw (198.180.60.141)	0 ms	0 ms	0 ms
3	clp-iac.oar.net (199.18.107.101)	0 ms	0 ms	20 ms
4	onenet-clp.oar.net (199.18.107.98)	40 ms	0 ms	20 ms
5	onenet.clp.oar.net (199.18.107.118)	20 ms	40 ms	20 ms
6	onhubgw.one.net (205.133.31.1)	20 ms	20 ms	20 ms
7	shell.one.net (198.30.92.106)	20 ms	20 ms	20 ms

In this case, the traceroute ends in the ONE.NET domain. Because the traceroute completes without any errors or asterisks, it can be assumed that the host data is correct and that the network is stable.

Example of unreliable Traceroute output:

traceroute from Prowebsite (in Millersville, MD, USA] to lestat.shv.hb.se (193.10.174.40), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets

1 rain (198.180.60.133)	160 ms	20 ms	0 ms
2 oar-gw (198.180.60.141)	0 ms	0 ms	20 ms
3 clp-iac.oar.net (199.18.107.101)	0 ms	0 ms	0 ms
4 clp4-e0.cincinnati.oar.net (199.18.106.4)	20 ms	0 ms	20 ms
5 oeb/1-clp.oar.net (199.18.105.13)	20 ms	20 ms	20 ms
6 sl-dc-8-H2/0-5M.sprintlink.net (144.228.28.5)	40 ms	40 ms	40 ms
7 sl-dc-6-F0/0.sprintlink.net (144.228.20.6)	20 ms	40 ms	40 ms
8 sl-pen-1-H2/0-T3.sprintlink.net (144.228.10.34)	40 ms	20 ms	40 ms
9 sl-pen-2-F0/0.sprintlink.net (144.228.60.2)	40 ms	20 ms	60 ms
10 icm-pen-1-F0/0.icp.net (192.157.69.30)	40 ms	40 ms	40 ms
11 icm-uk-1-H0/0-T3.icp.net (198.67.131.26)	120 ms	100 ms	100 ms
12 icm-stockholm-1-H0/0-5M.icp.net (198.67.131.42)	120 ms	160 ms	140 ms
13 upper-gw.sunet.se (192.36.148.196)	140 ms	140 ms	140 ms
14 lower-gw.sunet.se (193.10.80.34)	140 ms	160 ms	140 ms
15 gbg-sthlm-34m-gw.gbg.sunet.se (193.10.85.18)	140 ms	140 ms	140 ms
16 gbg2-ether-gw.gbg.sunet.se (193.10.160.18)	140 ms	140 ms	140 ms
17 hb-gbg-gw.gbg.sunet.se (193.10.85.130)	140 ms	140 ms	140 ms
18	*	*	*
19	*	*	*

The previous chart has shown you a traceroute that does not complete. It ends at HB-GBG-GW.GBG.SUNET.$

The network between the last 'hop' and LESTAT.SHV.HB.SE.

To do a traceroute from your domain site to your ISP (Domain -> ISP) visit the URL:

http://'domain name'/cgi-bin/traceroute or
http://'ip address'/cgi-bin/traceroute

SCREEN SHOT

Email your support staff the file named trace.txt in the C:\WINDOWS\ folder and the output from visiting the traceroute URL.

In order to do a trace route with a Mac you need software called
> 'WhatRoute' available from www.shareware.com

At times you may come upon sites that offer several locations for viewing their sites. Some sites do this because servers can become busy which will result in slow browsing of your website. By offering another option [another server in another location] you will ease the pressure and send the surfer to your faster website.

If you visit the popular software site TUCOWS you will given the option of selecting a location nearest to you to ensure faster and more reliable downloads. When I visit this site I choose, CANADA followed by BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Any business owner will tell you that one of the keys to success is location, location, location. Location in search engines, in online malls, on a partner's website, in a list of links or in a webring are just a few examples where location matters on the internet. Make sure your website is hosted on a high speed server preferably in the continent where you think your main target audience resides. At some point in time if you foresee a considerable increase in traffic to your site from other continents than your own, you may have to purchase webspace from a company in that continent as a security blanket. If you're selling advertising space to a local newspaper or sporting goods store, locate that site on a local server. If your products or services are sought after globally, maybe having more than one site in different continents will prove beneficial. As with any business, the cost of having several locations is a concern. When it is the success of your business involved, cutting corners is not the best solution. Determine who and where your main target audience resides, host your website in that area and in the future expand to other continents if your market expands globally.

One last note - Some search engine spiders will visit your site to check to see if it is real and online so they can update their database. If your ISP is not responding your site will possibly be deleted from the search engine database and in that situation you have to resubmit your website.

All the more reason to make sure your ISP is a reliable one. Here's hoping that the highway to your online store has wide lanes.