Have you ever noticed that your Internet connection speed seems to crawl at a snails pace at certain times of the day? If so, you've probably made note of other times when web pages appear at lightning speed.

Why does this happen? The answer is that the number of people visiting a web site or using a particular service varies throughout the day. As more people log on, the connection slows down.

Internet connections are like garden hoses. There's only so much water that can go through the hose. When you only have one nozzle connected, you get a powerful jet of water. However, start branching that hose out to several nozzles and each one gets less pressure. Divide things up enough and everything slows to a trickle.

The Internet works similarly. The various connections around the world can only transmit so much data before things bog down. The total amount of data than can be transmitted at any given time is called "bandwidth". Add in servers for popular sites that might not have enough bandwidth to handle all the traffic, and there's plenty of room for a bottleneck. In addition, even so-called "dedicated" connections can slow down as more customers log onto the network.

One final item that can slow things down is server or line failures. When systems go down, all that data has to be diverted around the problem. Just like a side street detour to avoid road construction, traffic can get pretty tight when everyone gets squeezed into fewer connections.

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