Is it Safari, my ISP, my network, or I am just frequenting SLOWWWW responding sites?

Why does it seems like every friggin web site I go to, I get slow response? This is getting really annoying. Up to 45 seconds for some sites to load. Some sites, their pages don't even load properly it takes so long. Is it me? Do I just have the worst luck on the planet that the sites I choose to frequent are all causing me to grow old before my time??? (OK, no jokes on that one)

This site is "... ok ...". Probably the best of all the ones I frequent.

This site
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=73
never loads properly the first time each day. If I open another TAB to go to a different forum on that site,
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58
after trying the first, it loads reasonably fast, and properly.

Then, this site takes a long time. Sometimes 45 seconds:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/fo...mID=293&cat=19

Same with this one:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/fo...pa?forumID=805

Then, this site
http://www.channeldb2.com/group/db2forzoswhatson
really sucks. I gave up after a minute.

Can anyone see anything in common? Am I a sucker for following websites that numbskulls design without performance in mind???

One of the observations I've made, is that it seems my browser isn't properly caching images like I think it ought to - like the little smilies and gif that riddle so many pages. How can I test this?

If I go to speakeasy.net/speedtest, (which takes about 6 seconds to load), it tells me that I get 17mb+ download speeds and just under 1.5mb upload speeds. I pay for a fast connection, and the speed test tells me I'm getting it. Is the speed test company in cahoots with my ISP? Could my ISP be governing my speeds below what I'm paying for?

Signed, Frustrated, Impatient and Paranoid.

All those sites load for me completely in < 5 secs here (most of them ~2).

High throughput does not equal low latency. Try ping?

Perhaps it's the DNS servers? Try and access the IP instead.

If zacs7 was right, then OpenDNS might be able to solve your problem.

Well, I may have solved the problem.

I had 2GB ram, and now I have 10GB. Holy cow. What a huge difference.

I'm pretty sure 2GB is enough for web surfing.

Everyone says that until they've surfed with 10GB. BWAH-HAhahahhaaaa

haha fine have fun.

10GB! You must be looking at a lot of videos :\

No, I installed VMWare Fusion on my Mac, and then installed XP Pro and Vista, and it came to a screaming halt (I'm exaggerating) at that point. XP was manageable, but Vista really sucked the resources.

I love the sound of not hearing my hard drive spin!