DSL Speed For Dial-up. Any good?

[Stratum9]

I'm stuck with dial-up for now here in Alaska and can't get DSL, but someone suggested Proxyconn to speed up the dial-up surfing.

From what I understand is it is basically a cacheing service and the drawbacks would be "stale" web pages just like you might get with your browser cache.

But other than that, anything else to be aware of? Does it really speed up browsing to "near DSL speeds." Of course, I know that's just perceived speed and not actual speed.

 

[ThePresence]

Just get a Monster Cable.


I kid, I kid.

 

[Nutdotnet]

Where in Alaska are you?

 

[fs5]

get firefox and use the block images from server feature, that should speed up browsing a bunch. and it's free.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: fivespeed5
get firefox and use the block images from server feature, that should speed up browsing a bunch. and it's free.

Why not just format the whole computer, install Debian, and run BitchX to browse the web?

You realize that the FREAKING MONSTER cache folder is going to bog things down, right? And that when you clear that cache, it will be right back to dialup? My advice is to just forget it. That kind of crap, along with that stupid NetZero High-Speed thing, are just giant wastes of time and monsterous investments in instability.

 

[fs5]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt

Originally posted by: fivespeed5
get firefox and use the block images from server feature, that should speed up browsing a bunch. and it's free.

Why not just format the whole computer, install Debian, and run BitchX to browse the web?

WTF how is installing FireFox the same as FORMATING and INSTALLING A NEW OS? Your comparison skills SUCK.

 

[Stratum9]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt

Originally posted by: fivespeed5
get firefox and use the block images from server feature, that should speed up browsing a bunch. and it's free.

Why not just format the whole computer, install Debian, and run BitchX to browse the web?

You realize that the FREAKING MONSTER cache folder is going to bog things down, right? And that when you clear that cache, it will be right back to dialup? My advice is to just forget it. That kind of crap, along with that stupid NetZero High-Speed thing, are just giant wastes of time and monsterous investments in instability.

That was generally my conclusion as well. But I wanted a chorus of ATOT responses to back up my claims of its worthlessness.

Nutdotnet: I live in the MatSu area. And yes DSL is available, I just can't afford it.

 

[Baronz]

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt

Originally posted by: fivespeed5
get firefox and use the block images from server feature, that should speed up browsing a bunch. and it's free.

Why not just format the whole computer, install Debian, and run BitchX to browse the web?

You realize that the FREAKING MONSTER cache folder is going to bog things down, right? And that when you clear that cache, it will be right back to dialup? My advice is to just forget it. That kind of crap, along with that stupid NetZero High-Speed thing, are just giant wastes of time and monsterous investments in instability.

It doesn't cache locally. It uses a sort of proxy to take all your requested images/data from the internet, compress them and send them to you. This results in "faster" web page/picture loads, but your images have bad jpeg compression, more so than usual. Also pre-compressed things like MP3s and such will not benefit.

When i was on 56k I tried one of these, It did work, but not to a great extent, basically it made your webpages look really bad and load a bit faster.

its nowhere near "dsl speed" though.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: Baronz

Originally posted by: FFMCobalt

Originally posted by: fivespeed5
get firefox and use the block images from server feature, that should speed up browsing a bunch. and it's free.

Why not just format the whole computer, install Debian, and run BitchX to browse the web?

You realize that the FREAKING MONSTER cache folder is going to bog things down, right? And that when you clear that cache, it will be right back to dialup? My advice is to just forget it. That kind of crap, along with that stupid NetZero High-Speed thing, are just giant wastes of time and monsterous investments in instability.

It doesn't cache locally. It uses a sort of proxy to take all your requested images/data from the internet, compress them and send them to you. This results in "faster" web page/picture loads, but your images have bad jpeg compression, more so than usual. Also pre-compressed things like MP3s and such will not benefit.

When i was on 56k I tried one of these, It did work, but not to a great extent, basically it made your webpages look really bad and load a bit faster.

its nowhere near "dsl speed" though.

Well, yeah, it is. DSL speeds at 30000 feet from the node!

 

[Stratum9]

I also don't understand how it would benifit much for dynamically generated pages, like news sites or sites with lots of rotating ads. Most of my sluggish dial-up browsing comes from waiting for ad banners to load before the content is displayed. So even if I had my browser cache turned on or was using Proxyconns monster cache, I don't see how it would help my browsing speed if the content or ads keep changing everytime I revisit a page.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Start mugging people so you can pay for DSL or something.