Recently, the biggest problem I've noticed is that the ad banners have often been slow to load. When using NetScape, this can cause the entire page to be slow to appear. That still doesn't sound like it is enough to explain your problem, however.

I've also heard reports from others about intermediate network nodes causing delays and lost packets. I suspect this is the main source of your problem. Try using traceroute (if you've got it, aka tracert under Win32) to www.perlmonks.org and see if there is a spot where the round-trip time sometimes jumps up or you start seeing packet loss.

If the problem is close enough to you, then you might be able to complain to your ISP (or just change ISPs). If it is more in the middle, then someone else is probably already complaining and the problem will probably get resolve itself in a week or two (either by fixing the problem or people routing around it).

Also, the site continues to get busier. Lately that means (to me and assuming that these times are not mostly due to network problems, which they don't appear to be, but I haven't tried to prove that) that it often takes several seconds to display a page, especially a complex page like Newest Nodes. But I doubt this has much to do with your problem and only mention it for the sake of completeness. (:

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")