Is there an "idle" speed for the web?

What defines the speed in which you open a web page ?

• For example, i live in europe, but how come i can open some pages really fast and others really slow ? My internet speed is around 5 mb. Can you tell me which defines the speed in which a page is loading ? How come when i open facebook is loads really fast, and most of the ''popular'' pages loads really fast. But some pages load really slow. Like for example, when i try to open a chinese web page it loads really slow ? How come ? It can't be the distances because i live in europe and the distance between usa - europe and europe - china are almost the same to me. Also, some chinese and japnaese pages loads fast. But most chinese pages loads really really slow. So i was wondering why is this ? Is it my connection the problem ? Is it the server that hosts the web page ? But then how come its so slow ? What kind of server do you have to use in order for your page to load really fast from everywhere in the world ? How come yahoo or facebook or most usa pages loads really fast from anywhere in the planet but there are pages that load really slow ? Can you please explain if possible in more details about how all this process works and what cause the slow loading and fast loading ? Thanks.

• Answer:

  Many different factors can slow pages from loading. Sometimes it depends your browser...as some websites were written for or only tested with certain browsers. Some other possible reasons would be Firewalls, RAM on your computers, ads on the webpage, flash content (this can really slow a webpage down), anti-virus software, programs like Spybot Search & Destroy that immunize computers (meaning they have to go through all the content and make sure it's safe), proxy servers (like hidemyass.com), browser anti-phishing site checkers; and probably other things as well. These are the main ones..and I hope this answers your question.