I am on AOHell and on dialup (usually average around 40-45k rather than 50k or higher). I actually find the speed to be not one bit slower on the new forums than on the old forums this time around (the techs did do a lot of rechecking of codes and such to improve speed performance since the last test launch).
Now if I am at work on the ISDN or whatever it's called connection, I find things are often significantly slower than my dialup connections when at home trying to access the internet! (of course I'm not supposed to be surfing around the net at work to begin with lol)
It's possible that your ISP / connection could be the cause. Some ISPs do get a bit bogged down if they have a lot of their users on at the same time. Also the internet traffic itself in general for a particular area/region regardless of the ISP can sometimes bog down your ability to access web content. Also I find that the computer itself could be running a bit below normal performance. Usuaully when I start having problems, I find just simply cleaning out temp files, scan disk check and defragging the drive pretty much fixes things up again.
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Wyvern