How to detect slow internet connections?

Javascript Problem Overview

Currently, most of the popular websites, like google, yahoo detect if the user connection speed is slow and then give a option to load basic version of the website instead of the high end one.

What are the methods available to detect slow internet connections?

_{P.S. I think this is achieved through javascript, so I will tag it as a javascript question? However, I am looking for answers oriented more towards PHP, if this is also server related.}

Javascript Solutions

Solution 1 - Javascript

You can start a timeout in an inline script block in <head>, which will be run as soon as it's encountered. You would then cancel the timeout when the load event fires. If the timeout ever fires, the page is loading slowly. For example:

<script type="text/javascript">
    var slowLoad = window.setTimeout( function() {
        alert( "the page is taking its sweet time loading" );
    }, 10 );
    
    window.addEventListener( 'load', function() {
        window.clearTimeout( slowLoad );
    }, false );
</script>

Obviously you would want to replace the alert with something a little more useful. Also note that the example uses the W3C/Netscape event API and thus won't work in Internet Explorer before version 9.

Solution 2 - Javascript

Here's a full implementation I just completed for a site I'm working on. Felt like sharing it. It uses a cookie to dismiss the message (for people who don't mind that the site takes a long time to load.) The message will show if the page is taking longer than 1 second to load. Best to change this to around 5 seconds or so.

The code below should be added right after the opening <head> tag, because it has to be loaded as soon as possible, but it can't appear before the html or head tag, because these tags need to be present in the DOM when the script is run. It's all inline code, so the scripts and styles are loaded before any other external files (css, js or images).

<style>
	html { position: relative; }
	#slow-notice { width:300px; position: absolute; top:0; left:50%; margin-left: -160px; background-color: #F0DE7D; text-align: center; z-index: 100; padding: 10px; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; }
	#slow-notice a, #slow-notice .dismiss { color: #000; text-decoration: underline; cursor:pointer; }
	#slow-notice .dismiss-container { text-align:right; padding-top:10px; font-size: 10px;}
</style>
<script>

	function setCookie(cname,cvalue,exdays) {
		var d = new Date();
		d.setTime(d.getTime()+(exdays*24*60*60*1000));
		var expires = "expires="+d.toGMTString();
		document.cookie = cname + "=" + cvalue + ";path=/;" + expires;
	}
	
	function getCookie(cname) {
		var name = cname + "=";
		var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
		for(var i=0; i<ca.length; i++) {
	  		var c = ca[i].trim();
	  		if (c.indexOf(name)==0) return c.substring(name.length,c.length);
		}
		return "";
	} 
	
	if (getCookie('dismissed') != '1') {
		var html_node = document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0];
		var div = document.createElement('div');
		div.setAttribute('id', 'slow-notice');
	
	    var slowLoad = window.setTimeout( function() {
	        var t1 = document.createTextNode("The website is taking a long time to load.");
	        var br = document.createElement('br');
	        var t2 = document.createTextNode("You can switch to the ");
	        var a = document.createElement('a');
	        a.setAttribute('href', 'http://light-version.mysite.com');
	        a.innerHTML = 'Light Weight Site';
	        
	        var dismiss = document.createElement('span');
	        dismiss.innerHTML = '[x] dismiss';
	        dismiss.setAttribute('class', 'dismiss');
	        dismiss.onclick = function() {
	        	setCookie('dismissed', '1', 1);
	        	html_node.removeChild(div);
	        }
	        
	        var dismiss_container = document.createElement('div');
	        dismiss_container.appendChild(dismiss);
	        dismiss_container.setAttribute('class', 'dismiss-container');
			
			div.appendChild(t1);
			div.appendChild(br);
			div.appendChild(t2);
			div.appendChild(a);
			div.appendChild(dismiss_container);
			
			html_node.appendChild(div);
			
			
	    }, 1000 );
	
	    window.addEventListener( 'load', function() {
	    	try {
		    	window.clearTimeout( slowLoad );
		    	html_node.removeChild(div);
	    	} catch (e){
	    		// that's okay.
	    	}
	    	
	    });
	}
    
</script>

The result should look like this:

enter image description here

Hope it helps.

Solution 3 - Javascript

You could listen to two DOM events, DOMContentLoaded and load, and calculate the difference between the time these two events are dispatched.

DOMContentLoaded is dispatched when the DOM structure is ready, but external resources, images, CSS, etc. may not be.

load is dispatched when everything is ready.

http://ablogaboutcode.com/2011/06/14/how-javascript-loading-works-domcontentloaded-and-onload/

Solution 4 - Javascript

You can get the connection speed by downloading some test resource (image would be more suitable) whose size is known to you (which is easy to get) and measuring the time taken to download it. Keep in mind that testing one time will only gives you the connection speed at that instant. Results may vary from time to time if user is using bandwidth parallel to the image tests. This results in the bandwidth available for your app, which is what we need exactly.

I read somewhere Google does similar trick using some 1x1 grid pixel image for testing the connection speed at the page load and it even shows you something like 'Connection seems slow, try HTML version'... or similar.

Here is another link describing the same technique - http://www.ehow.com/how_5804819_detect-connection-speed-javascript.html

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Starx	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Javascript	Sam Hanes	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Javascript	Jules Colle	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Javascript	Ryan Li	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Javascript	manikanta	View Answer on Stackoverflow