Carl Cerecke wrote: > Steve Bell wrote: > >> I hope this ain't too OT as to tick any of you off. What do you make of >> this? >> >> Sorry, here's the link. It's supposed to be a high compression > > > There's the problem: high compression. You only get high compression on > highly uniform data. Forget most jpeg/mpeg/mp3/rpm/tar.gz files. That > is, most of the larger stuff already has some sort of compression > applied to it. It's not going to get much smaller (may even get bigger!) > with extra compression. > > Cheers, > Carl.
Basically what this "boost" is doing is basically zipping up the webpages before they're sent to you. Its a system thats been around for a while, and is best implimented at your ISP rather than some random choke point on the web that you'd force all your data through. Saying that though, more and more websites support "mod gzip" which basically does the same thing, on the fly, in your webbrowser, if its supported. (supported in any recent mozilla, not sure about IE) All its doing is taking advantage of the high compression that can be achived on webpages and *unoptimised* images for the web. Once images have been optimised for the web, there is going to be little space saved by zipping them up. Emails will get a nice boost too, but not your downloads. Its also worth pointing out that linux has had a basic version of this technology around for years, ppp deflate has been in the linux kernel for ages which does the same basic compression. If you've ever noticed your modem getting a faster download than technically possible, ppp_deflate is probably the reason, often it'll be compiled into the kernel or automatically loaded without you even having to worry about it. If you insist on wanting to try this boost type technology out, use a trusted NZ isp rather than an overseas spammer trying to make money off you (they'll probably force ads at you using all the bandwidth saved by compression) *Slingshot Accelerator - $6/mo on top of normal dialup http://www.slingshot.net.nz/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=999&tabid=18 *Ihug High Speed Dialup - Accelerator is free with "Get All" plan. http://www.ihug.co.nz/products/dialup/ There are probably more NZ isp's offering something like it, those were just the first two I found. Sascha
