Google’s Urs Hölzle gives the following world-wide average statistics regarding internet use.
- Average page load: 4.9 seconds
- Average page size: 320 kilobytes
- Average bandwidth: 225 kilobytes/second
If bandwidth were the only limitation, the average page should load four times faster using the average bandwidth. The Internet protocols that have served us remarkably well were designed for very different usage scenarios. Hölzle says that web pages could load between two and four times faster if we make slight changes to infrastructure protocols and their implementations.
(Sam Savage would point out that you can get into trouble using averages as we did above. When you have variable quantities X and Y, the average of X/Y is not simply the average of X divided by the average of Y. But the calculations above are accurate enough for back-of-the-envelope estimates.)