WOW!!!

[drpootums]

I've had earthlink for a while now and i never really noticed a big speed increase with the accelerator for loading web pages. But after a fresh HDD reformat i noticed that Earthlink has an "accelerator" update you can download. Anyways, i did and configured it, and i'm almost speachless! Large web pages with graphs take only about 8-9 seconds to load, compared to close to 30 for normal dial-up. Infact Earthlink's performance testing on my computer says that it's loading at an average of around 210 kb/s.

I'm just posting this to see if it helps anybody else. I dont think downloads or gaming will run faster, but i am quite impressed with my newfound speed (which for dial-up still isnt much, but it's still pretty nice)!

 

[harrkev]

Yup. These seem to work, and there are a few of them out there. Here is how they usually work:

1) Images are converted to lower-quality JPEG
2) HTML has all of the extra comments and blank space removed. Some use a type of .zip compression on the .HTML file for extra speed.

Disadvantages:
1) Graphics do not look as nice.
2) Does not speed up downloading binaries.

But, if you get it free with your service, have fun with it!

 

[jadinolf]

My ISP offers one also.

Since I work mainly with text the fact that graphics leave a lot to be desired doesn't concern me.

 

[kamper]

How does it modify the html? Do they host a proxy that grabs and changes stuff for you?

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: kamper
How does it modify the html? Do they host a proxy that grabs and changes stuff for you?

Yep, the pages are cached, and then streamed to you when you visit the URL.

 

[ShadowBlade]

all they do is run images thru a proxy server and decrease their quality to make them smaller...it does nothing for downloading or streaming or anything else like that...it only improves page loading time
(reference: tech TV)

 

[drpootums]

Yes, but it's still nice when looking at large graphs