I posted 2 days ago about connections problems to Google.com and more major websites. The reason was broken pipes from my country to the USA.

While this connection problem occurred I noticed that when I accessed other websites, that were easily accessible, the Google toolbar slowed down the connection speed. After disabling the toolbar all was ok and the speed was good again.

I thought the toolbar didn't affect the speed of accessing other websites except from checking the PR, but it actually caused a long delay for each page to appear. I don't how much of a problem this is but I got a feeling that the toolbar plays a bigger role in the surfing experience than I previously thought.

I know this may reveal my little knowlegde of the technology behind the Google Toolbar but that's ok, maybe you will teach me a little about this stuff.

I don't think a google toolbar would slow down your connection that much, since it's not really doing too much. It sounds more like general connection issues, are you using wireless? I'm not a whiz on computers, but normally google's toolbar doesn't affect the speed at which you surf the net. Sorry i couldn't be more help.

I too agree with Techie's answer, toolbar don't affect the net speed. May be some sites which takes lot of time to load can affect the speed.