Opera Turbo; performance and ad issues

First, I don't know which is the best place to post this, as I see it, this topic fits equally well in both "Opera for Windows" and "Opera browser". But I am using Windows so I chose the "Opera for Windows" forum.

I have some issues with Opera Turbo that I need to get explained to me.

1) I don't normally use the turbo feature. Often, I get the notification informing me that I am on a slow network.
What does "network" mean? We are all part of the network (world wide web), so which part of the network do they talk about, is it my end or the website I visit? Is my internet connection slow or is the website slow? The way it is worded sounds to me that it is my connection that is slow, but that makes no sense because my ADSL bandwidth is 12000 kbs. That is enough to stream ten videos simultanously.

2) I tried to turn on Opera Turbo. I got a problem with web pages loading very slow, and they do not finish loading. It seems like 95-99% loads after a while, but the last bits seems to never load. One of the websites I had this problem with, is this forum. But also Wikipedia and other sites.

3) When I have Opera Turbo enabled, I get ads on the web pages. I use Norton Internet Security with ad-block, and it blocks all ads normally. But the ad-block doesn't work when I use Opera Turbo. This means that the browser is downloading a bunch of ads which is a waste of time and bandwidth.

Perhaps the ad-block in Opera would work, but it is not practical. I have used very much time to add strings and keywords to the Norton ad filter, and I don't want to spend a full week copying this to the Opera ad-block, and the Opera ad-block is also very ineffective compared to the ad-block in the firewall.


I hope someone can enlighten me on all these issues. Thank you.

EDIT: I'm using 11.60, but I think it is no different from earlier 11.xx.

Opera Turbo is a built-in, optional function that allows browsing to websites through Opera's own high-speed servers (technically using them as a "proxy"). Data coming back to you from the websites is also routed through Opera's servers, and if there are any images or graphics, those are data-compressed (which may cause loss of detail resolution, but reduces the download bandwidth so the data can flow faster to you). It is intended for use only by users connected over "slow networks" - specifically, dial-up.

Opera can internally sense when a website is "slow" to respond to your browsing requests. If it detects such "slowness", regardless of whether it is caused by a user's slow network pipeline like dial-up or by a slow website's own internal network, it will send up the "slow network" message you see, suggesting the use of Turbo (based on the assumption the problem originates in the user's own pipeline) or else indicating an error because it finds Turbo is shut off for that browser.

If you are not on a slow-speed (dial-up) ISP connection, don't use Turbo. It will only cause problems with sites, whether it even kicks in at all or only kicks in sporadically. If you are on a fast network (DSL, etc), using Turbo is actually counterproductive and detrimental, to the extent that in newer versions, it is even blocked from "kicking in" on fast networks. But the "slow network" messages can still pop up for some slow websites unless you block the messages manually. To kill the slow-speed messages, enter Opera:config in the browser address box. In the Quick Find box at the top of the resulting page, enter the words: Network Speed -- then uncheck the box behind "Show Network Speed Notification" in the panel that appears, then click Save and exit the page.

Whenever Turbo is being used, browsing goes through Opera's servers - so down-coming website data coming to the user will appear to come from the Turbo servers, not the original website. Any browser ad filtering that relies on blocking certain of the return-URLs of the incoming data packets will see Opera's Turbo server URL and not the URL of the actual ad-server or website... hence it cannot successfully filter it out. If you set it to block the Turbo server in order to kill the ad, then it may kill some or all the other stuff coming from the Turbo server as well.

Originally posted by blackbird71:

Opera can internally sense when a website is "slow" to respond to your browsing requests. If it detects such "slowness", regardless of whether it is caused by a user's slow network pipeline like dial-up or by a slow website's own internal network, it will send up the "slow network" message you see, suggesting the use of Turbo (based on the assumption the problem originates in the user's own pipeline) or else indicating an error because it finds Turbo is shut off for that browser.

If you are not on a slow-speed (dial-up) ISP connection, don't use Turbo. It will only cause problems with sites, whether it even kicks in at all or only kicks in sporadically. If you are on a fast network (DSL, etc), using Turbo is actually counterproductive and detrimental, to the extent that in newer versions, it is even blocked from "kicking in" on fast networks. But the "slow network" messages can still pop up for some slow websites unless you block the messages manually. To kill the slow-speed messages, enter Opera:config in the browser address box. In the Quick Find box at the top of the resulting page, enter the words: Network Speed -- then uncheck the box behind "Show Network Speed Notification" in the panel that appears, then click Save and exit the page.

So the "slow network" message may mean two things: Slow connection and slow server.
opera:config is cool, but isn't that a detour to the destination? There is an option "Notify me about network speed" in the Opera Turbo Settings (ctrl + F12). But if that doesn't work then I'll go to opera:config.

Whenever Turbo is being used, browsing goes through Opera's servers - so down-coming website data coming to the user will appear to come from the Turbo servers, not the original website. Any browser ad filtering that relies on blocking certain of the return-URLs of the incoming data packets will see Opera's Turbo server URL and not the URL of the actual ad-server or website... hence it cannot successfully filter it out.

I see, so THAT is why ad-block doesn't work. It's so obvious but I didn't think of the fact that a lot of the definitions in the ad filter are on website level and it won't pick up on something originating from Opera's servers.


I am so much wiser now, thank you for clearing this up.

But there's one other thing I don't understand. You said that the "slow network" message can be triggered by a slow server. If the server is the worst bottleneck, how can it be faster if Opera Turbo kicks in? As long as my connection is not slowing things down, I should get the same download speed as Opera's servers.

Originally posted by Vikingen:

... But there's one other thing I don't understand. You said that the "slow network" message can be triggered by a slow server. If the server is the worst bottleneck, how can it be faster if Opera Turbo kicks in? As long as my connection is not slowing things down, I should get the same download speed as Opera's servers.

The slow network message can be triggered by anything that slows the data traffic that "paints" a webpage view into your browser. Ordinarily (without Turbo), your browsing commands are sent in multiple packets over your ISP connection, through your ISP's servers to the Internet backbone network, and then on down the website's communication link to its own servers, then on into its webpage program code. The return traffic to you is sent as multiple data packets and follows the same path in reverse. If the packets arriving at your browser for Opera to assemble into a screen display are slow and spaced long apart in time, it is because there is some kind of slow response somewhere in the overall data path. Opera flags this as a "slow network", suggesting Turbo as a possible remedy in its message.

If you are on a dial-up connection to your ISP, that (by definition) constitutes a slow network, but one that Turbo can remedy since it (Opera's servers) run at high speed to/from the websites's Internet connection and can compress the data coming back from a website to reduce bandwidth demands and force the resulting compressed webpage more quickly down your dial-up pipeline to you (albeit with reduced graphics resolution). But Turbo cannot overcome slowness that exists between the Turbo servers and the target website code itself.

A dial-up connection to a user is not the only source of slowness... it can also exist along the Internet backbone connections themselves because of traffic loading or equipment problems, as well as at the website end of the data transactions for similar reasons. Normally, those parts of the path will be pretty high-speed, but "normal" does not always happen. As a result, a "slow network" message can also occur for reasons having nothing to do with the connection speed to your ISP. Because Internet and website server conditions can (and do) change quickly, these non-dialup slow network messages usually "come and go" over longer time stretches for users, as conditions for the path to a given site fluctuate.