A question on Web page size

[GCC]

I'm a newbie here, so I may be missing something. Most website design instructors recommend having a page no more than 30-50 kb. But when I check on the size of typical commercial sites such as the NY Times and others, the kb size is around 400-500. I have DSL, so the sites come in quickly, but the calculators I check claim that such sites should download much more slowly than they actually do. Can anyone explain this? Thanks,

Glen

 

[zkiller]

30-50 kb might have been the goal back in days of dail up internet. with broadband connections becoming more readily available and thus the bandwidth available to users becoming wider, many web sites are increasing in size in order to bring the users a better experience.

a site that is only 30-50 kb's in size would be fairly bland static page by todays standards.

personally, i think 400kb isn't bad for present standards.

of course it also depends on the type of site.

 

[ian]

still a lot of people at dial up speeds, I have a wireless broadband modem i use sometimes, and while that is considered broadband, it operates at dial up speeds.
Also sites like nytimes may be bigger, but consider they are probably run off high tech multiple servers, you may not get the same speed from a shared hosting account.

 

[zkiller]

still a lot of people at dial up speeds, I have a wireless broadband modem i use sometimes, and while that is considered broadband, it operates at dial up speeds.
Also sites like nytimes may be bigger, but consider they are probably run off high tech multiple servers, you may not get the same speed from a shared hosting account.

on dial up the limitation is the average 4.5 kbps downstream. server side resources hardly scratch the surface of their abilities at those kind of speeds.

yes, dial up is still widely spread amongst internet users. but i wouldn't call it an industry standard anymore. however, i don't want to start a debate on the topic.