Confirmation times: Averages, expectations and variations (?)

[bitneck]

I use bitcoin on a relatively powerful laptop, with an Internet connection that will max out at about 23Mbps. I have just made my second transfer to a party and 57 minutes later have just garnered my first confirmation.  I have noticed on a number of bitcoin sites (namely gambling and other solicitations) that one confirmation should only take about 30 minutes.

My questions are:

Is there an average confirmation time based on number of connections to the bitcoin network or network speed?

Is there a reasonable expectation I can place on the confirmation time. If so what factors can increase/decrease this expectation?

What can affect the variation time? Active connections? Personal hardware? Transfer amount?

[Birdy]

Is there an average confirmation time based on number of connections to the bitcoin network or network speed?

Is there a reasonable expectation I can place on the confirmation time. If so what factors can increase/decrease this expectation?

What can affect the variation time? Active connections? Personal hardware? Transfer amount?

Actually the average confirmation time should be about 10 minutes, but it varies a lot. It can be 1 minute or 1 hour.
It isn't much affected by your connection (maybe some seconds, unless your connections are zero of course), but it's affected by other things:
- the fee included/coin age/bytesize/transfer amount -> priority of your transaction to be included in the next block (-> confirmation)
- the connection of the miners
- tendency of the network hasing power for mining (going up->less confirmation, because more blocks are found)

[odolvlobo]

The average time to process a block is supposed to be ten minutes, and the time until the first confirmation averages half that. The actual time has nothing to do with you. It totally depends on the luck of the miners.

I was affected this morning because I was trying to sell some bitcoins and the first confirmation of the transaction took over an hour. Ironically, the subsequent blocks were added in 3 minutes and 1 minute.