Internet Accelerators

By Joshua Erdman
Digital Foundation, inc.

You have seen the commercial: "Our Internet Accelerator can speed your Internet browsing by 5 times!". For any dial-up user 5 times sounds like a lot but compared to Broadband 5 times is a drop in the bucket.

Internet Accelerators revealed

The truth is that with these software based accelerators, the data is not getting to your computer any faster. Typically what happens is a mix of prefetching, compression, and caching to make the use of a slow dial-up connection more efficient.

Specifics

Prefetching - this is where while you are reading a page AFTER all the content has already loaded, the Accelerator program will take advantage of that slow time to look ahead and 'guess' where you will click next. Then it will start downloading the images from those pages.

Compression - compression for most accelerators (like MSNs built-in one) happens on the ISPs side where their servers will reduce the quality of the pictures before they are downloaded to your computer.

Caching - this is where your computer will store the images that it has already loaded. So when you go to the same page that you have been before, it will use the pictures it has cached so it does not have to download it.

The Bottom Line

The speed claim for web Accelerators is true ONLY for web browsing. It will not improve uploads and downloads any faster (such as retrieving and sending e-mail messages). The cost of most entry level broadband connections rival dial-up so there is little to no reason to stay behind and subject yourself to the torture of aging prematurely at your computer while you wait.

Final Note

There is another type of accelerator out there that will actually use dual dial-up connections. This requires 2 dial-up modems, 2 phone lines, and the ISP you are connecting to must support it. Of course a connection like this is proprietary to the ISP and is definitely more complicated but if you are desparate for bandwidth call your ISP and see if a support technician can help.

Other Articles of Interest

Choosing Broadband

Article last reviewed: 03/22/2005

Created by: Digital Foundation, inc.

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