... and more! There are a few technical issues in this thread that have been danced around but not really concisely addressed. Far be it from me to be concise, but I can dance with the best of 'em! <GGG>

When you click on a link, a message is sent by your computer to your internet service provider (ISP). Your ISP is actually connected to the internet "backbone," not you (unless you are connected directly to the backbone, and then you don't need me telling you how this works <G>). Your ISP relays the message on the internet, where it goes through routers and systems until it gets to the host of the site your message is for. That host then concocts a response and sends it back to your ISP through all them routers, who sends it to your modem.

Modem speed affects the connection between you and your service provider. The more data in the messages, the longer it takes to get the packets back and forth between you and your ISP. Also note, the message you send is usually tiny (a URL), and the response is usually huge (all them graphics).

Then there's the speed of the internet, which is way faster than your modem. 36KBPS is 36 thousand bits per second, about the fastest your 56KBPS modem really communicates. I think the internet is on the order of 10MBPS (10 million bits per second), maybe more. Bottom line here is, most of the time your ISP has the answer back way fast, and the bottle neck is your modem. (Get on the backbone!)

But some routers and servers are slower than others, and the server that is concocting your response is affected by how many other users are requesting responses from him at the same time. Greg's server is getting your request and then spinning on it for way too long. Your ISP can't even start sending it to you until he gets it. Faster modems won't help.

Now, comments have been made about images on Greg's board vs on your own server, and links to images vs the image URL in the image box. Greg's server has more data to transfer if he's hosting the image than if the image is on a different server. This is only a factor when the image data is transferred. If the URL is in the image box, the data is transferred when the message is viewed. If the poster simply provides a link in the text, it occurs when the reader clicks that link. You can put the link in either place, regardless of where the image is hosted. Greg suspects the problem is not directly related to image hosting or viewing, but script processing.

This may come as a surprise to most people, but I vote for putting the image URL in the image box. Keep them purdy chips acommin'. Once it's in your cache it views the next time without going to the ISP (unless you haven't seen it for awhile and your cache flushed it, but that's a topic for internet 102).