Posted by cwdjrxyz on 10/17/06 21:49

JWL wrote:
> Hi
>
> Has anyone noticed problems with the W3C validator recently? I live in
> the UK, it's midday and it's taking about 20-25 seconds just to load the
> validator page, and nearly twice as long as that to actually get results
> from the validator.
>
> These has been going on for a few weeks now IIRC.

Of course your problem can be anywhere along the route from the server
to you in the UK. I have noticed that the response time for many sites,
including my own, can vary quite a bit, especially between the US and
Europe. I have a download rate of over 5 Mbps from sites that link to
the web with the best fiber optic connections and do not have
overloaded servers. However even these sites can drop to dialup speeds
and take many seconds to connect when there are problems on the web. It
often is not the fault of the server, but with some router, a DOS
attack, etc. I can get about 4 Mbps download speeds between my server
in the central US and a speed measuring site in London. However this is
the exception, and some connections with other sites in the UK and
Europe are much slower. Here in the central US the W3C validator
usually pops on in under one second for me. However I have seen a few
times when the connection can be as slow as you mention, but not often
in recent weeks.

On the rare times the W3C validator is too slow or down, I find the WDG
validator at http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ to be a very good
replacement.

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