Top 10 Myths About Internet Speed – 2026

When we talk about the internet, most of us automatically assume it’s fast. The truth is, that’s one of the biggest misconceptions—hence the “Top 10 Myths About Internet Speed.” People tend to think more bandwidth equals better performance and a smoother experience. But here’s the kicker: that’s not actually how it works. The internet, at its core, wasn’t built to be fast—it was built to survive. It’s resilient, redundant, and fault-tolerant, but “high-performance” wasn’t exactly on the blueprint.

Understanding internet performance has become way more important in recent years, especially for web applications and SaaS platforms. These platforms rely on dynamic, personalized content and bidirectional interactions. In other words, your users aren’t just reading static pages—they’re sending and receiving data constantly. That makes latency, packet loss, and jitter a huge deal.

When internet performance lags, the consequences can be serious. Poor performance can block entry into certain markets where the internet infrastructure is weak, frustrate users and push them to competitors, and even drive up operational costs because companies feel the need to deploy servers all over the world just to keep things moving.

With that in mind, let’s dive into the Top 10 Myths About Internet Speed that hold back web and SaaS apps from delivering a smooth, global user experience.

Myth #1: The Internet Was Designed for Optimal Performance

Here’s the first misconception: people assume the internet was designed to be fast. Nope. Not even close. The internet was built for resilience—basically, it’s meant to survive attacks, outages, and all sorts of failures, but not to give you a perfect streaming or SaaS experience.

Take the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), for example. BGP is the protocol that decides how data travels across the ISPs making up the internet’s backbone. Sounds important, right? It is—but it doesn’t care about speed. It makes decisions based on routing rules, policies, and often cost. If one path is cheaper than another, BGP is happy to send your traffic that way, even if it’s slower or more congested.

If a network is experiencing packet loss, jitter, or latency, BGP doesn’t reroute around it just to make you happy. It’s like having a GPS that only tells you the cheapest route, not the fastest. This is why consistent, predictable performance across the internet is basically impossible.

Myth #2: Internet Performance Is “Good Enough”

A lot of people assume that the internet we have today is fast enough for business. Reality check: it’s not. Poor internet performance can tank the user experience for web applications and SaaS platforms.

Ilya Grigorik, in his book High Performance Browser Networking, cites studies that show how sensitive humans are to delays in digital interactions. A 200ms delay feels like a hiccup. 300ms starts to feel sluggish. Hit 1 second, and users mentally check out. At 10 seconds? Forget it—they’re gone.

Here’s the kicker: the average web page today takes more than 3 seconds to load. Mobile? More than 8 seconds. That means most SaaS apps aren’t operating anywhere near their potential. Companies spend tons of money on optimizing their web apps—minifying scripts, caching, tweaking backend code—but internet performance itself often gets ignored.

The fallout is real:

• Customers in Europe, Asia, and Latin America often face slower performance than those in the U.S., leading to lower satisfaction.
• Users experiencing lag are less likely to buy or renew subscriptions.
• New features, which require more data and interactivity, can actually make things worse unless the underlying network is optimized.

So, thinking “our internet is fast enough” is a recipe for disappointed users and lost revenue.

Myth #3: BGP Will Always Find the Fastest Path

This one trips a lot of people up. BGP doesn’t find the fastest route. It only decides which ISP—known as an Autonomous System (AS)—your data should go to next. That’s it.

There are two main issues here:

1. Cost-driven routing: ISPs route traffic based on business agreements. Sometimes the cheapest path is slow. Sometimes it’s congested. The point is, BGP cares about relationships and costs, not speed.
2. No dynamic rerouting for congestion: BGP has no built-in feedback loop. If a path is congested or dropping packets, it won’t magically reroute your traffic. You just sit there in traffic.

BGP is great for keeping the internet connected, but don’t expect it to give you optimal performance for a SaaS application.

Myth #4: The Speed of Light Explains Slow Internet

A lot of people blame slow internet on physics—the distance your data has to travel. But here’s the reality: the speed of light through fiber is roughly 80ms anywhere on the planet.

If your page is taking 10 seconds to load, it’s not because light is slow. That delay is caused by congestion, packet loss, retransmissions, and inefficient routing—not physics.

Regions with limited bandwidth, like parts of Asia and Latin America, are often more affected by congestion than distance. Big downloads, slow pages, and chatty apps suffer because of traffic jams, not because light is lazy.

Myth #5: Regional Points of Presence Are the Best Fix

Companies often think, “Let’s build a server closer to users—that will fix everything.” That’s partially true, but it’s not the magic bullet.

Originally, websites were hosted in a single data center, but as global traffic grew, congestion became a major issue. The solution? Regional Points of Presence (PoPs) to cache static content like images, videos, or PDFs. That led to the rise of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).

CDNs work great for static content—but for dynamic, personalized data, they’re mostly useless. SaaS apps that rely on user-specific workflows or bidirectional communication can’t just slap a CDN in front. Plus, even if a PoP is physically closer, network routing might still send users elsewhere. Sometimes, the fastest path is to a more distant data center because the “shorter” route is congested.

Myth #6: Performance or Security—You Can’t Have Both

Another common misconception: you have to pick between security and performance. Not true.

CDNs often cache content to improve speed, but storing sensitive information in caches has risks—as we saw with the CloudBleed bug. SSL offload is one workaround: it keeps content encrypted and reduces latency, but it requires sharing SSL certificates with the CDN. That can violate policies or regulations.

The point is, there are ways to optimize performance without compromising security—you just have to think beyond the traditional CDN model.

Also Read: Top 10 Myths About WiFi 2026

Myth #7: Upload Performance Is Doomed

Many assume that uploads are always slow, and, well, that used to be more true for residential DSL or cable. Upstream bandwidth was often limited, and traditional CDNs are mainly designed to speed up downloads.

But upload performance can be improved. Modern overlay networks—basically cloud-based systems that optimize routing and protocols—can speed up dynamic, bidirectional traffic. As web apps grow in complexity and size (JavaScript payloads grow about 50% per year!), these approaches are becoming more critical.

Myth #8: Chinese Internet Performance Can’t Be Fixed

China is huge for SaaS vendors—over 700 million users compared to about 280 million in the U.S.—but delivering consistent performance there is notoriously tricky. The Great Firewall introduces packet loss, latency, and throttling. ThousandEyes reported 7% packet loss in China versus 0.04% in the U.S. That’s massive.

Static content can be optimized with CDNs, but dynamic SaaS interactions are still slowed down. Throughput that’s 30 MBps in North America might drop to just 8 MBps in China. The solution? Overlay networks and other new technologies can help SaaS vendors achieve U.S.-level performance inside China.

Myth #9: Monitoring Will Fix Backbone Problems

Monitoring is useful—it tells you what’s wrong—but it doesn’t fix anything. The internet is a black box. You can detect congestion, outages, or routing issues, but you can’t control the underlying network.

Common causes of slow performance:

• Congestion: Too much traffic, not enough capacity.
• BGP convergence: Traffic can loop or take weird detours before eventually finding a path.
• Outages: Even giants like AWS, Google, and Azure go down.
• Government interference: See China’s Great Firewall.

Monitoring tells you the problem exists, maybe even where it’s happening, but you still need solutions like private lines or overlay networks to actually improve performance.

Myth #10: Just Put Servers Close to Users

Finally, placing servers near users helps a little, but it’s expensive, complex, and often not enough. Adding regional PoPs requires:

• Managing multiple application instances
• Synchronizing duplicated content
• Hiring more staff to maintain the infrastructure
• Slower agility for rolling out new features

Even with regional PoPs, last-mile issues and BGP routing can still ruin performance. Your New Jersey data center might still route New York users to London. Physical proximity doesn’t guarantee fast, smooth service.

Final Thoughts

Internet performance is a messy, complex beast. People assume it’s fast, BGP will find the best path, and CDNs or PoPs will magically fix all problems. Reality is far more complicated. Internet performance is influenced by congestion, routing policies, upstream limits, government controls, and even protocol inefficiencies.

Understanding these myths—and why they’re wrong—is critical for SaaS vendors and web application developers. The good news? Solutions exist. Overlay networks, protocol-level optimizations, smart routing, and careful network design can make global applications feel fast and responsive, even in regions with historically poor performance.

So the next time someone says, “The internet is fast enough,” or “Just throw a PoP in Asia,” you’ll know better. Performance doesn’t happen by accident—it requires smart architecture, careful planning, and a deep understanding of how the internet really works.

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