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MSUNAG, 

I wanted to get your opinion on a problem I'd experienced with Google via AT&T DSL.  I found that, yesterday, sites that used Google code or features were very slow.  I'd seen this before sometimes at home. I thought it was just me at first, but then found these reports of the same behavior

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24186278-Google-Routing-issue-again
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?hl=en&tid=11e4fec4dac2eaab

I noticed it on a website I'm making using the Google maps API/javascript, which pulls script from Google (as most of you know).  At home on AT&T DSL, the site was incredible slow, hanging on the map code. When I removed the Google javascript and map, it loaded just fine.

I began to notice many other sites that loaded google JS were also slow.  For a while even searches timed out, but mostly it's those sites using google analytics, adwords, maps, etc.  

I checked my own site from couple other places - it was fine.   Campus, a Mason ISP, California.   That pointed to, for me, a problem with AT&T.   I've had issues with AT&T before (once it was their DHCP server) but they always blame the user.  So I never bother calling them. 

The problem is gone now, but potentially any of our own sites that rely on google could be problematic for AT&T users.  For this particular project, I'm planning on fetching a static map and caching that server-side until the dynamic map is ready.  

I wanted to add my experience to the sporadic reports of local broadband service on this list, and see if anyone else has this problem and knows of potential work-arounds. 

Thanks!




Patrick Bills
Michigan State University
Department of Zoology
http://www.zoology.msu.edu
http://www.hyenas.zoology.msu.edu
517 353 8649