Browsing to DW Slowdown ... More from DW Support & Progress

"[I]t seems to be an issue with alter.net, which is run by Verizon."

And if I try searching for recent messages online about Alter.net and communications problems, I find, for example, this: "The host google-gw.customer.alter.net (alter.net is part of Verizon network) is experiencing horrific packet loss, sometime upwards of 50%." That means that along this route, communications on the Web, which is broken up into a stream of chunks called "packets," is being compromised not only by the loss of the packets themselves, but by the fact that if the sending server (the host) knows that a packet has gone missing, it will re-transit the packet, and so traffic bulks up again.

It seems that playing Youtube videos is where the major slowdown is seen most often. There were several recent postings at various message boards about this issue.

I tried doing a "traceroute" myself, and yes, I can see where the communication runs through Alter.net.

On the other hand, response this morning is pretty sprightly. Either things have improved, or there are just fewer people online (and downloading chunky stuff like videos) at 8:00 a.m. U.S. ET!

So yeah, if your connection to DW runs through Alter.net, you may be seeing (or have seen - let's be optimistic) this issue, and if not, you likely won't.