Are you using FF? If so, which version? The latest version is much faster
than the previous one. There are several add-ons that slow FF down and one
or two that can speed it up. You can also edit your about:config manually to
speed up FF.

This is an example:
crenk.com/.../

If you are not using FF then let us know. Also flash is a big problem in
slowing down link loading and you can get flash blockers for both FF and
Chrome/ Chromium.

Firefox 3.6.3, SeaMonkey 2.0.4, Epiphany 2.30.2 and even the e-mail
client, Thunderbird 2.0.4 all drag to load links and images. Anything
that goes onine from this machine seriously drags on the internet. It
makes my high speed cable internet seem like a 14.4 connection. A web
search is an exercise in frustration. I've encountered this problem
with 9.10 and now with 10.04, but the problem does not exist in 9.04.
Applications that do not utilize the internet are not giving me a
problem. My laptop is still using 9.04 and it is chugging along just
fine, so it is not a problem with the internet connection it's self.

I have not noticed a slow down with Firefox that is a problem, I have
however noticedThunderbird is slow to get started. This however I
attribute to my settings and how much I keep on my machine. I noticed
that thunderbird checks my messages and does what I like to call
synchronizing my mail for me, before it takes up my allotted download
service to download stuff I already have on my machine.

Perhaps you could try a different desktop environment and see if this is
still the case. Say, install Xubuntu or Lubuntu. Each desktop environment
has its own network manager. It might be worth a try. I for one would be
interested in the results.

That's an interesting case, pathologically speaking. It's bizarre to
hear that moving to 9.04 ever "fixed" anything for anyone, since 9.04
was such a disaster performance-wise for so many users. Those with intel
or ati graphics were particularly hard hit, but the disk I/O performance
problems affected all.

There are several things that could case long link loading times, but I
can't imagine any of them which would be fixed by reverting to 9.04 -
that just doesn't compute, so let's ignore that data point and try to
zero in on the cause of the delays.

1. Name resolution services - is your designated dns server fast and
reliable?
Try a test - use the following command:

time host www.chowking.com

record the output, then repeat the command and record the output again.

On an ubuntu box at my house it looks like this:

jjs@libby:~$ time host www.chowking.com
www.chowking.com has address 61.28.168.121

real 0m0.743s
user 0m0.020s
sys 0m0.000s
jjs@libby:~$ time host www.chowking.com
www.chowking.com has address 61.28.168.121

real 0m0.439s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s
jjs@libby:~$

How do your numbers compare?

Over the years I've found that running a local caching dns server on
linux provides a huge speedup over the typical laggy dns servers
provided by ISPs.

2. Local system resource bottlenecks - you might be pressed for RAM, I/O
or CPU.

Please show the output of the command:

top -n 1

3. Browser woes - perhaps the problem is in the browser itself. It's
always useful to have other browsers to compare with. For instance, I
find that google chrome for linux comes up in a fraction of a second,
while OTOH firefox takes several seconds to appear.