... and slower, and slower.... and slower...

Just gave up after waiting 2 minutes for the wall to load. It's usually slow on here anyway, but now I seem to just abandon my visits after watching the page trying to load.

I usually follow that up with a quick speed test and all is fine. Why does the wall take SO long to load the images? I don't get that issue on other web pages?

It's not just the wall.... click on my 'likes' button and that takes over a minute

Hey ho. Small potatoes in the bigger picture I guess

I've asked about this before umd has 3 main servers to run the entire site if it bothers you I'd recommend signing up for a VIP account to help support the infrastructure.

Yea.. I know
But to be honest, I call in here.... gawp at some messy chicks and leave after 3 mins. If I want a pic, just download it off the wall (once it loads).

I never download or buy anything ... not paying $15 when I have a wife willing to do the messy stuff.

Just wondered why in this day of super fast internet, it was so slow

As I have pointed out many times over the last couple of decades, sites like "speedtest.net" are meaningless for troubleshooting a distant site if you don't select a distant test server. The default server is very likely a cache machine in a building you can probably see from your front porch.. The first test has no value aside from showing you that the connection at your house is on and functioning. Also, it's very well known that most ISPs will prioritize any connection to a speed testing URL, so you are rarely going to see any problems that your ISP doesn't want you to see.

To do a real test, you need to select a different server that is somewhere near the site you are having trouble with. This is orders of magnitude more important for overseas connections. Last time I checked, the UMD main servers are in Las Vegas, NV, USA. Select any test server in those locations if you want a genuine speed test of your connection to the UMD. You should also test several times throughout the day. transatlantic connections are always going to be slower in your local daylight hours and even worse during "prime time" (5:00pm to about 10:00pm)

FYI, Vidown is in Seattle WA USA if you ever want to test your connection to us.

Viewing gifs and videos is practically impossible for me now, it literally feels like I'm back in the 90s on dial up internet.

I suppose I'm not helping, as @Curiouspaints points out, by not being a VIP member, but I just don't understand why this site seems to be getting progressively slower over time (for me at least). It kinda feels like the UMD is crumbling under its own weight.

Like I said.... it's the only this site that is slow.
Everywhere else I go the connection is fine.

UMD has always been slow, but now it's at a crawl. I have totally given up waiting for the images wall to load... life's too short.

The test I ran just now was 100 miles away. I changed to 2 other test points (Its not Speedtest), and they were about the same. 412.17 Download Mbps

It's fine, just an observation.

The UMD is not 100 miles away. It's many thousands of miles and dozens of "hops" (network routers, switches, and traffic shaping appliances) away. Select a test server in southern Nevada USA

There are two basic types of websites. Major corporates, with deep pockets and access to global content delivery networks (CDNs), and small independents.

The majors pay to have their content served by CDNs which means that no matter where in the world you are, when you access those sites the data is probably coming from no further than the nearest big city and has top level priority for packet routing across the network. That's why things like Google and Facebook and the BBC can load so quickly.

The independents on the other hand will at best have a small farm of servers in one place, and all traffic to and from them will have to travel across the entire internet from those servers to your browser. In the case of Saturation Hall, that server farm is in a datacentre in Yorkshire. So access from most of the UK will be quite quick but it's probably a lot slower in the US and very slow in Japan. In the case of UMD, that server farm is in Las Vegas, 5000 miles from the UK. Every click you make, every image you view, has to travel that entire distance, passing through dozens of routers and switches, and traversing the trans-atlantic links. That's why it's slower than other sites.

It's not just you. Sometimes the picture wall and pictures in general take a long time to load for me, though it definitely depends. Sometimes it can take a few seconds, sometimes it's over a minute. iperf tests to servers my company has out in Nevada from New York and Philly show no issues.

You don't hop across switches.

A handy tip when a site is being slow to load images - use Right Click and "Open In New Tab". Open each page that's going to be slow in a separate browser tab, and then catch up with the text areas, messages, forums, etc, while the other tabs load in the background. Then when all have stopped spinning their loading icons, everything is just a click away, no waiting.

This no longer works for me. Opening pics in a new tab redirects me to the home page, but that could just be on my end.

As for your other comment, on why certain sites are faster than others, that doesn't really explain why the UMD seems to be getting slower over time. It didn't used to be like this, pictures and videos used to load just fine.