I could see these compression companies making headway... but not at their current prices. Maybe there are some LINUX compressors out there? -- Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, VCI Help Desk wrote:
IMO Earthlink's "accelerator" is crap. They use a software called Propel installed on the client machine. It doesn't require anything special from the ISP. IMO Propel is just that $29.95 garbage that people see in a banner or popup and install on their computer because it says it'll make your connection faster. It probably does DNS caching and a little better web page caching and that's about it.
Earthlink does use the Fourelle service but only with their wireless service.
I've been evaluating the software from Fourelle and SlipStream Data and they do work as stated. BUT, it's very dependent on the content you are viewing. It doesn't help speed up compressed files, although in theory it does due to the removal of TCP overhead with Fourelle's software. I didn't notice any significant improvement while downloading a 17 meg copy of Netscape 4.5. General web browsing was faster though.
I ran speed tests at bandwidth.com, dslreports.com and toast.net and most importantly just plain old browsing and there was an improvement. The type of content determines the speed increase. The method the speed tests employs will determine the speed test results. With the accelerator software the speed tests were around 300k to 400k. DSL Reports.com didn't yield any improvement because of the method they use to test. Like I said, it's content specific.
Bill Dunn
----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Farber" <farber@admin.f-tech.net> To: "Discussion relating to the 3Com/US Robotics Total Control modem systems." <usr-tc@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 1:34 PM Subject: Re: [USR-TC] OT: Accelerators
I love when comapanys get the fur of ISPs ruffeled with promises of accelleration.
'Remove the whitespace' from web pages? You mean compress the text? Don't modems already have some pretty good compression protocols to handle text? JPEG/GIFs could be compressed... but a good web site already does that. .ZIP files? compressed. MP3's? compressed. exe files? compressed. Where do the 'big savings' come from?
Moving from TCP to an encapsulated UDP client/server protocol sounds like you would save some time with protocol overhead... but what would it break?
Earthlink etal are trying some sort of 'broadband lite' service (no, not v.92.. the OTHER broadband lite) for like an additional $7/mo. That would take a dail up account to almost $30. Cable/DSL services start at $39. The accerator companys name starts with a 'p' if I remember correctly.
-- Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545
On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Support(at)inet2000.com wrote:
Hi. I hope this isn't deemed off-topic, since I'm very interested in the discussion and people's experiences as well. This topic deals with dialup, and in particular, extending the lifeline of our Total Control dialup products, so I for one consider it to be very ON topic. If anyone uses or has tried these new compression, optimization, acceleration products, I'd be very interested in hearing your results / comments. :-)
- Todd Chamberlain
----- Original Message ----- From: "VCI Help Desk" <admin@vci.net> To: <USR-TC@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 9:12 AM Subject: [USR-TC] OT: Accelerators
This is slightly off topic but related to dial up in general.
Does anyone use or have tried the acceleration services from
SlipStream
Data (www.slipstreamdata.com) or Fourelle (www.fourelle.com) ? These are acceleration services that require you to put a special server on your network and a client on your PC. The software on the PC acts as a proxy (usually transparent) which communicates with the server to compress web pages and alter image files. Fourelle uses a proprietary protocol called "reliable UDP" to communicate with the server because TCP takes longer. Fourelle can proxy (speed up) all the common internet protocols while SlipStream Data only does HTTP at the moment. Fourelle will have a Mac client available soon whereas SlipStream Data only works on Windows. Both of these can work over dialup, wireless, DSL, cable, etc.. Fourelle actually got started with this as a wireless application. I believe a major hotel chain started using it to compress data being sent to via satellite.
Also, something else intriguing. On our network we have a CacheFlow server (known as a client accelerator). After researching these two services I have discovered that the CacheFlow is kinda out of date because there are other accelerators that clean the web pages and images. These accelerators are intelligent because they know where in a web page the white space can be cleaned. They can also reduce the sizes of image files. For example SpeedWise (www.speedwise.com) sells proxy software for Solaris that intelligently removes the white space from web pages, reducing the overall size of the web page. There are similar products or appliances from RedLine, Packeteer, Boostworks and FineGround.
I just thought these new ideas were incredible. Fourelle has been around since at least 2001 and I don't know about SlipStream Data. Some of the reviews I read were from 2001 so the products should have been improved.
A couple of ISPs using this software are www.madbbs.com, www.gladenet.com , www.net1Plus.com , www.trellis.net
Bill Dunn
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