Flash website loading extremely slow!

[navyblue]

I have a website that I designed for a client, and it takes about 2 minutes to load (client, not happy). The site is hosted by 1and1.com. The site used to take 5 seconds to load, but all of a sudden one day it just started taking about 2 minutes. I called tech support, and the tried running their tools (none of which worked). So my only other option is to move myself and my client over to a new hosting company. Also, the .swf file is about 3mb, is this too large? And considering that I am looking for a new hosting company, which would be the fastest for a flash website?

Any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

The site can be viewed at: www.zamaanaarts.com

[ryanbutler]

3MB for a SWF file is rather large. How fast/slow Flash runs doesn't directly relate to your host. It's more related to the size of your SWF file and what connection people are using to run it, plus, network congestion on the net, which happens.

[navyblue]

Thank you for your reply. When I called 1and1.com they said that the site loaded just fine on their end with no slow downs. And the thing is that I also have a flash intro (.swf is 249kb), and its performance is very jagged with little pauses here and there. Even some of the images (about 50kb each) that I have for the html pages take a few seconds to pop up. All of it was running fine 2 weeks ago, and all of a sudden its not. I am not sure what happened?

[ryanbutler]

Trying clearing your cache.

[trepidity]

I don't know a lot about Flash in particular, but web development other than flash is my specialty. I just took a look at your site and it does the same thing for me. The loading mechanism you have, if it is loading the entire 3mb swf file before you can even view any part of the site than that is your problem right there. That is far too much data to require the client to DL before seeing anything but the background image of your page. It should take a while on an average connection. Testing from a local location in relation to the host server won't display this bc the connection rate is so much higher. If I am right in that being what your doing, I would try(if you can) loading just the important parts of the page that the user first sees, no extra content and no long audio files. Then load them when they are requested only, or even in the background while the page is being viewed. If that is not the issue, then you should check and see if the hosting server bandwidth is being overloaded or hogged by something. I doubt your provider has a dedicated line for just you. They may be reaching bandwidth capacity on whatever line the server hosting your site is on, or reaching some set restriction on ur bandwidth usage at one time. Get a traffic report on ur site and ask them question to the above nature.