The speed of your internet connection is the number one factor that shapes your use, experiences and level of frustration with web services (ie. email and web browsing). While internet connection speeds continue to leapfrog in the USA, Australia is largely derided for falling so far behind with its broadband links. Here in Vanuatu, most people fail even to reach the definition of “broadband” speed – so it is imperative that you keep your traffic to a minimum.
While the speed of your internet connection is most important, note also that everyone shares just a few high-speed satellite links out of Vanuatu to the rest of the world. It only takes a few businesses or individuals to start downloading large files and the whole country notices the impact. This is clearly evident from the difference in speed you will see during working hours compared to evening or even better early morning.
You are not likely to be able to do much about reducing the impact of other internet users on the international connections, but you can make sure that your own computer and/or network is minimising internet traffic to give you the least time-wasting frustration. There are two areas to consider – pushing traffic out to anti-social hours where you can, and compressing the traffic where you can.
TVL offer a free download of Booster, a bit of software that will compress internet traffic between your computer and a remote internet server. This is a very handy utility that you should take full advantage of, as it can make a substantial difference to your web browsing experience. Many webpages are capable of being compressed quite considerably, and even though there is an overhead in compressing a page, sending it, and de-compressing it at your end, you will still be miles ahead compared to the time needed to send the page “as is”. See www.tvl.vu for their “Booster” link in the left-hand column, everyone should have it.
Besides compressing traffic, you should make sure that nothing else is trying to use the internet connection when you are (unless it has to). For example, schedule your anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall updates to take place in the wee hours of the morning. Likewise, Windows updates if you have a legal copy of Windows, or Ubuntu updates if you use the free equivalent to Windows. You may also need to temporarily shut down any web-linked services such as Widgets or email software set to automatically check for email every few minutes.
All in all, internet connection in Vanuatu is very slow for somewhere that prides itself on that state of its international communications. You need to treat that internet speed (ie. “bandwidth”) carefully and make the most of it. Sooner or later the faster speeds will come, and just as in the days of old when everyone had to be ultra-careful with their hard-disk space but now can afford to be profligate, you will one day be able to ignore whether sound or video are included in a webpage. For now, you should learn to recognise what is small and fast versus big and slow – and learn how to make good coffee when you are waiting, waiting, waiting.
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