Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Modem Accelerators?

Posted by Cliff on from the sounds-like-digital-snake-oil dept.

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I was browsing on the web and came across a reference to Coastal Web Online's claim of a modem accelerator Apparently it is a service which is supposed to make your modem 3x faster. Is this possible? I've already got a v.92 modem and I thought it already did compression. It is possible it is a proxy doing some compression on white space in HTML or something, but I don't think so, since it apparently only works with Windows 9x and Internet Exploder. For $8.00 a month ontop a the dialup access sounds kinda snake oilish. Does anybody on Slashdot use the service? Would they recommend it? This sounds remarkably similar to the old idea of 'waxing your modem'. Am I missing out on something here?"

2 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. latency? by babychess · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Even if this was possible, compressing text files, or removing whitespace from HTML, latency wouldn't change. In many situations, latency is more of a concern as simple "speed". If you're using Emacs over SSH for example, each character that is typed needs at least the minimum ping time to be displayed, regardless of compression.

  2. doesn't work with netscape? by capoccia · · Score: 2, Insightful
    3XS Minimum Requirements
    ...
    Either one of the following: Windows 95b, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4, Windows XP Browser: Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher web browser (currently does not work with Netscape browsers).

    This must be some pretty kooky compression scheme that it can only work with one brand of browser.