Surfing the Internet in China slower on Sundays

Browsing websites is often a slow and frustrating experience in China. Apart from blocking over 2600 websites and searches, the Great Firewall also imposes a serious bottleneck on speed. There have been rumors that the Internet is especially slow on Sundays. Analyzing more than 80,000 tests executed by our system from March to November this year, our data seems to confirm this suspicion.

The tests consist of downloading the front page of each of the world's 500 most popular websites, as defined by Alexa. Apart from aberrations in March and June, download speeds on Sundays have consistently been between 8 and 25% slower than the average of the other days of the week. Here's the full test data summary (all speeds in bytes/second):

Month	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Sunday relative to other days	Number of tests
Mar, 2011	22,898	23,007	26,178	25,560	25,356	23,968	27,353	12%	11,032
Apr, 2011	30,365	33,640	29,141	33,206	32,969	29,689	27,953	-11%	17,775
May, 2011	32,691	28,676	36,201	30,092	29,455	29,130	25,814	-17%	5,889
Jun, 2011	21,663	32,227	30,507	29,736	28,434	28,377	28,812	1%	5,946
Jul, 2011	17,719	28,352	24,868	20,987	21,955	22,250	17,089	-25%	7,621
Aug, 2011	22,460	21,472	21,516	20,859	23,235	20,241	19,980	-8%	12,499
Sep, 2011	24,485	22,978	21,824	22,172	22,345	19,045	17,906	-19%	12,671
Oct, 2011	25,369	21,414	23,172	22,827	22,892	22,572	18,473	-20%	14,213
Nov, 2011	27,000	24,044	28,638	25,640	24,910	25,809	23,984	-8%	9,233
AVERAGE	24,961	26,201	26,894	25,676	25,728	24,565	23,040	-10%

One theory why the internet would be even more restricted on Sundays is that this was the weekday chosen for the attempted Jasmine protests earlier this year. Another theory could point to Sunday being a prime day for internet users across the country to download music and movie files or to consume online media, which would explain why Saturday is the second slowest day of the week. Also, the authorities might prioritize speed on weekdays in order to allow companies somewhat better Internet access.

It is also important to note that the internet has been getting slower compared to speeds earlier this year.

Have you also experienced the slow Sunday phenomenon? Please add your comments below.