Why Are Mac Browser Download Speeds Still Varying So Much?

[rapayn1]

Okay. With a sheepish grin, I now know what Webkit is. I downloaded the latest overnight build (r31388). I reran all of my browsers again:

Using the same speed test site (Flash version):

[www.dslreports.com]

I now got the following results:

Camino 1.5.5 (12,839 Kb/s download - 911 Kb/s upload - latency 47 ms)

Safari 3.1 (12,289 Kb/s download - 922 Kb/s upload - latency 62 ms)*

WebKit (10,631 Kb/s download - 913 Kb/s upload - latency 27 ms)*

Netscape Navigator 9.0b3 (13,047 Kb/s - 922 Kb/s - latency 48 ms)

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.13 (15,138 Kb/s download - 914 Kb/s upload - latency 46 ms)

*ISP upload compression was detected. Your upload speeds may be inaccurate

Only Safari before and after Webkit prompted the ISP upload compression notice. Obviously, the numbers (download more than upload) keep changing based on the load on my node. Not as many people around here using their Internet connections at 7:30 a.m. So, there is some speed increase (especially in Firefox). I guess if I tried this test 100 times today, I would get 100 different answers. My question is still why do I not get the same download and upload speeds (within a few kilobits) with Netscape, Camino, Firefox, Safari, etc.?