On 14 Nov 2005 at 10:43, David Chaney wrote: > For various reasons I am looking to get a cheap dial up account for us here > at work. Looking into the costs and features I am finding that most of the > big ISP's now all offer some kind of "accelerator" for a few dollars more. > Anyone here use those and are they worth the extra few dollars?
I use one and they do work. Whether it is worth it or not is, of course, a separate matter. The most common ones do three things for you: 1) compress data on HTTP connections [NOT https connections, though!] 2) reformat jpg and gif images to make them smaller 3) compress your POP connection. All three of those are worthwhile, *do* help, and don't hurt. Won't help at all for things that are already compressed [e.g., .zip files] or for any other sorts of TCP connections [and so, for example, you'll often do better to do HTTP downloads than FTP ones if you're "accelerated"] Overall, if you have access to it, I think there's really no reason NOT to use the accelerator. As for "5x speedup", I guess it is possible, but not likely. For normal web surfing it'll get perhaps a factor of two in speed [which isn't to sneeze at for us'uns stuck with a [EMAIL PROTECTED]@$% dialup connection]. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- -- ---------------------------------------- The WIN-HOME mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
