If you work on anything web related and you have a Mac or an iOS device, I strongly encourage you to try the "Network Link Conditioner". It's a preference pane (on OS X) or a setting (on iOS) that allows you to simulate different types of networks. You can artificially limit bandwidth and transmission delay, simulate package loss and DNS delay.<p>For me, it's become an essential tool for testing website & app performance.
You don't have to go to Africa for network latency testing. Here's McDonald's Sunnyvale today:<p>64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32201 ttl=47 time=3894.012 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32202 ttl=47 time=4160.846 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32203 ttl=47 time=4438.250 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32205 ttl=47 time=4511.332 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32206 ttl=47 time=4877.157 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32207 ttl=47 time=4230.125 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32208 ttl=47 time=4140.820 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32209 ttl=47 time=3657.129 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32210 ttl=47 time=3668.067 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32211 ttl=47 time=3978.231 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32212 ttl=47 time=3639.352 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32213 ttl=47 time=3559.121 ms
64 bytes from 72.9.103.50: icmp_seq=32214 ttl=47 time=3362.324 ms
For every other location BUT Africa you can get a speed test from this site: <a href="http://www.webpagetest.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.webpagetest.org/</a> -- this also lets you different browsers and run an initial + repeated (with something cached) test.
Very cool! I work with the Anglican Diocese of Central Tanganyika. We host out of the U.S., and they are always complaining of page load time issues.<p>Do you know of/recommend any local hosts?
From personal experience whilst traveling through Tanzania & Kenya using a 4G modem from Safaricom the issue was/is latency. Bandwidth is plentiful but the latency is horrible which resulted in AJAX applications timing out before requests could be completed. Example of this was Gmail, the application would not even function in AJAX mode but switching to plain HTML mode, whilst it took forever, worked like a charm every time.
You may want to update what facebook has stored for your form's OG data as it has some old info/screenshots.<p>What I see: <a href="http://imgur.com/2OPznGX" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/2OPznGX</a><p>Update here: <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/" rel="nofollow">https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/</a>