Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Accelerated Dial-Up Internet

What Is Accelerated Dial Up?

Anyone who has surfed the Internet using a dial-up connection is aware of how slow web pages load. This is due to the fact that your dial-up Internet connection speed is limited by the bandwidth of phone line.

Although you can't increase the bandwidth of your dial-up Internet connection without upgrading to a high speed broadband provider, you can dramatically increase your existing browsing speed. Accelerated dial-up requires no new hardware and works with your existing phone line and modem.

How Does Accelerated Dial Up Work?

Special advanced compression and caching software is installed on your computer. There's generally a configuration menu where acceleration preferences can be set, such as image compression levels, excluded sites, etc.

You then connect to the Internet via the providers' high speed proxy server that reduces web site access time and can filter unwanted ads and other unnecessary objects. This process vastly reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted through the telephone line that connects your computer's modem to the Internet.

The data and image compression software will provide an immediate improvement in performance. Caching saves time by avoiding unnecessary repetitive data transmission by intelligently retaining and reusing data that had previously been downloaded to your computer .The longer you use the software the greater improvements you should notice in surfing speeds due to the effect of caching.

Because not all data can be productively compressed some web content such as encrypted data from secure web sites can not be accelerated.

What Gets Accelerated:

Each web accelerator works a little differently, but generally the following is true of most accelerators. All text including the HTML, CSS, Javascript, and other markup of the web page, email message text, and other downloaded text files are compressed on the fly. This process is similar to the familiar drive compression or zip / unzip process. The files are decompressed to their original state as they are downloaded to your computer.

Web site images such as GIF and JPG graphic files are already in a compressed state. The acceleration server will then reduce the quality of the image somewhat to create an acceptable trade-off in image quality vs speed gained through the reduction process.

What Doesn't Get Accelerated:

Other than the web images described above, most compressed files such as MP3 music files, MPEG and other video files, P2P and ZIP file downloads, and gaming and streaming video feeds will not be accelerated.

Encrypted data from secure sites https:// such as banking and secure shopping checkout pages will be sent in its' original form, and no speed increase will be realized when downloading this type of content.

How Fast Is It?

Most accelerated dial-up providers claim that web pages load an average of 3 to 5 times faster. Naturally, the specific speed increase you will receive is determined by many factors including the types and frequency of web sites that you visit. Some users have reported up to 20 times speed increases for specific web pages.

The longer you use the software and more regularly you visit specific web sites, the greater the performance boost you will notice.

Is Accelerated Dial Up For Me?

Only you can answer this question, since everyone has different needs and expectations. Web acceleration software is available as a subscription service, but many Internet providers include accelerated dial up with their service package.

You will find many introductory special deals as you compare your accelerated Internet options using our low cost dial up provider comparison chart.

http://isp1.us/article/how-accelerated/