Dial-up: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
"High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by Jay M - 10/20/04 11:00 AMI am moving from DSL to dialup (ouch. I know, but it's cheap!). Anyway, after doing a lot of comparisons online I decided I may go with ISP.COM for dialup service. Like many others, they offer two choices: regular or "high-speed". The latter requires special software to 'accelerate' the connection.
I am asking if y'all know if this is real, or just something that is technically true, but not that noticeable to the user (sort of like CDs recorded at higher bit-rates)
Any advice or opinions?
Regards
JM
Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by Tman1 - 10/20/04 10:36 PM In reply to: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by Jay MIt's a scam.
The only reason you can surf faster on "high speed" dialup is because they compress the images to the point that they look like crap, thus making the file sizes smaller.
It is not possible to make downloading any faster on dialup.
Agreed. . .
by Coryphaeus - 10/21/04 10:23 AM In reply to: Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by Tman1They can't change the physical makeup of the telephone cable pair. All they do is add a different type of caching that makes previous pages load faster. And compression as mentioned above.
This high speed dialup works for me
by caktus - 10/21/04 2:46 PM In reply to: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by Jay MI use Proxyconn [http://www.proxyconn.com ] I think $48 a year. As mentioned in previous post it simply cashes pages I access and compress them. Once a page is cashed it will load faster, faster, and faster. Offers $ back guarantee. It also has settings to block popups, ads, and speed up email download. Proxyconn works so well that I have been using it with great success for 2 years now and plan to keep using it (infact I don't want to be w/o it.). However it has no effect on Secure pages and barley effects downloads.
Some ISP's offer thier own versions to be used with thier own servers only. Proxyconn is freestanding so you don't have to change your ISP.
ISP AllVantage [ www.allvantage.com ] offers a good one for use with thier own servers ($3 a month I think.)
My experience is that the free ones and many pay ones are crap and many of them contain malware.
Re: This high speed dialup works for me
by MarDel53 - 11/5/04 2:52 AM In reply to: This high speed dialup works for me by caktusI am hooked up with NetZero. It does work faster than what I was using previously. Secured sites are not faster (thank goodness). It does give me the ability to change the picture quality by simply right clicking on the picture and left clicking on "show all images as full quality" which it changes immediately. The only draw backs with NetZero are; browser has to be IE and you have to turn off the High Speed to allow Norton to update your virus definitions. I am hoping their support team listens to me on these issues as the service is rather cheap and I like it.
Re: This high speed dialup works for me
by jwphillips - 11/5/04 4:33 AM In reply to: This high speed dialup works for me by caktusThere's a marketing ploy if I ever heard of one. Like it was stated in a previous post, you aren't going to get over a 56kbps connection on an analog telephone, and most of the times you aren't even getting that. Storing webpages in the cache and compressing images is just a software solution.
JOI was sued by Bellsouth for claiming they were as fast (as the lowest speed) DSL. "High-speed dialup" is a scheme for suckers. It doesn't speed up downloads, doesn't compress html code, and is a big security risk if you have more than one user on your computer. Why do you think people empty their Internet cache?
The software is good if you visit the same set of webpages all the time. If not, then don't bother (and don't be fooled into paying more for some software you can usually find for free on the Internet.)
Re: This high speed dialup works for me
by precious81098 - 11/5/04 7:11 AM In reply to: This high speed dialup works for me by caktusWhat does your streaming video look like? Does it start right away and run smoothly, or does it take a little time, then run jerky with drop outs in video or audio? I've got Fiber To The Home (FTTP) and it beats anything I've ever seen. Usually I'm close to T2 speed-wise, and once in a while faster than that. I don't think there's a dial-up that can touch it.
fiber
by francissawyer - 12/3/04 2:30 PM In reply to: Re: This high speed dialup works for me by precious81098"Usually I'm close to T2 speed-wise, and once in a while faster than that. I don't think there's a dial-up that can touch it."
Duh.
Re: This high speed dialup works for me
by chantman0 - 11/5/04 6:19 PM In reply to: This high speed dialup works for me by caktusYep! Netzero High speed works for me! It's a definate improvment over regular dialup. True it doesnt work for downloads. The quality of the pictures are poor but can be improved throught the option setting. Mine is set at top quality pics and its still faster than regular dial up. I think the Internet providers will eventually make this part of the common ISP software in the future. I believe the speed depends also on your computer and how you maintain it by doing system maintenance,etc.
Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by mmcdonald - 11/5/04 4:33 AM In reply to: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by Jay MI used NetZero high speed dial up. What it does is reduce the quality of the images on each page so they look like the first pass of a progessive scan. It may limit progressive scan jpgs to the first pass. It wasn't much faster.
At the time, I was also administering an IIS web site with FrontPage. Having high speed on prevented me from logging in, probably due to the lack of proper encryption, so that may be a problem if you are doing any online transactions.
I would bite the bullet and get cable if you can.
Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by m420punk - 11/5/04 4:48 AM In reply to: Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by mmcdonaldI can think of one way that the ISPs could try to make it seem faster for dialup. The major problem of home computing is resolving domain names. This is not a problem for someone like me who has a DNS server in house, but for standard users one of the longest waits is for "the page to begin loading". The fact is that when you type in www.cnet.com, your computer has no idea what that means. It has to send a request everytime to a DNS server at the ISP. A few things that the ISP could do are: have more DNS servers available to process requests, link the DNS servers into the switching packplane that accepts dialup connections, or with software keep a local file of common name resolutions that is updated every week or so. If the don't do this yet, they really should... the image settings vs. speed issue is something that everyone can already set on their own browsers (or you can get a descent browser like mozilla and download appropriate plugins).
Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by rae421_88 - 11/5/04 9:29 AM In reply to: Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by m420punkhey m420punk,
You should really be careful about recommending Mozilla. I downloaded it and installed the program, but thank goodness for me, I had anti-spyware and anti-adware programs running. After getting numerous alerts for spybot and spyware programs, I still tried Mozilla. The results I got weren't enough to make me change from IE, and, I had to uninstall Mozilla because it made my computer slow down tremendously. After uninstall, my computer was it's old self. I am running Windows 2000 Professional, I have a 1.6G hard drive (7200 rpm), 512MB of ram. Nothing should make my machine lag like that. Mozilla is NOT a good browser. No one should download it.
Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by LVLifeguard - 11/10/04 2:43 AM In reply to: Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by rae421_88This is just to "rae421_88". I cannot believe you would slander (well, libel, since it's print) Mozilla like that. It is the best browser I have ever encountered. Obviously if CNET supports it and encourages users to download it as an IE alternative, it doesn't do ANY of the things you said. You should have learned by now that most spybot and spyware programs are a tad overzealous, sometimes saying Microsoft and Norton and other sanctioned programs are infact spyware. The other thing is, if Mozilla is as bad as you say, how would it get an 8.0 out of 10.0 from CNET? That is not the easiest thing to do, and how would it have a 95 PERCENT positive feedback from 654 people? from users like us? Not even the world-renowned (and loved) Ipod has that good of feedback from it's users, not one of them! Anyway... not to take this as a personal attack, but I just wanted to say that one should do their homework before publically (and wrongly) defacing the integrity of a tried-and-proven product. (Besides, it's a wonder anything works on that dinosaur of yours).
Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by wtbates - 12/1/04 9:26 AM In reply to: Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by m420punkThe major problem of home computing is NOT resolving domain names. The speed of the DNS lookup is negligible in most cases. A home user (broadband or dialup) is not continually waiting for the page to be loaded. Having a DNS sever at home will not significantly boost your internet browsing experience. Before people start giving advice, please know what you are talking about.
The fact remains that the “fast” dialup does work for the general population. Yes, it is nothing more than a bit of smoke and mirrors, but for most home users stuck with dialup, it is enough. There will be plenty of people that find fast dialup not worth the price or unable to fit their needs. In that case, you have two choices, regular dialup or broadband (if you can get it).
My suggestion is to try the “fast” dialup and see if it works for you. Most companies have a trial period. Remember the purpose of fast dialup… looking at non-secure (no https://) websites. It does not work for secure websites, file downloads, uploads, streaming video, etc. (anything it cannot compress or cache).
Believe it or not, the majority of home users only read web pages and e-mail. Average internet user generally does not read forums like this. They don’t even know that they exist. If you are reading this, then you are probably not an average internet user and fast dialup may not fit your needs.
If you can afford it, I would always choose broadband. Money is a strong factor, that is why dialup is still attractive for people who live in areas that broadband covers. Good luck.
Re: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality?
by ejafanador - 11/5/04 4:58 AM In reply to: "High Speed" Dialup: Myth or Reality? by Jay MIt pretty much is a joke i think. I tried it on NetZero HiSpeed when they gave free weekend trials. All they do is cache the images on their servers and when you request the web page they upload the images in a compressed format resulting in a dull image (pixelated).
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