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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?"

4 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. How to modem accelerate as a webmaster by proxybyproxy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The best thing I ever did for my modem users, was to install mod_gzip, which compresses every page (be that HTML or any dynamically generated PHP page) apache sends out.

    Result? Up to 92% compression! My pages are loading so much faster than before, AND I am saving on my bandwidth bill.

    Installation is a breeze, the mod is a beauty.

    - the mod_gzip project
    - scoop article on mod_gzip
    - some stats for intune.org

    --

    Hurra for Knark!
    1. Re:How to modem accelerate as a webmaster by HyPeR_aCtIvE · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I read a bit on this, and it does seem to have two drawbacks, that noone ever mentions:

      A) It takes more processor power on your webserver. It has to constantly compress files to send ... on a highly loaded webserver, this can make for alot of extra processor overhead.

      B) It takes more processor power on the client. Well the client's gotten it quickly, but now it has to uncompress it. On a massively overpowered machine that is only running a web client at the time, not a problem. But perhaps problems for people with older machines, or running lots of stuff at the time.

    2. Re:How to modem accelerate as a webmaster by Tower · · Score: 5, Informative

      If the pages are static content, A) can be relieved with caching of the gzipped pages. If you are generating dynamic content (via DB lookups, etc), you'll have more of a hit, but relative to the the lookup time, the gzipping is fairly quick.

      B) you may be stuck with, but on a P100/64MB playing 192kb MP3s while surfing to a fairly involved site (say 500kB/page) the time saved over the link will more than make up for the decompression (yes, I've tried this myself). There was a large discussion on this quite some time ago (probably close to a year), and if the proc isn't pegged on the server, the client still saves time...

      Quick numbers for an actual page (366858 bytes):
      http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/ 04/204622 6&mode=nested
      Raw page transfer: 366858 Bytes /(5kB/s) = ~71.65s

      Gzip time: .3us on a 375Mhz PPC RS/6k with .7 load
      Transfer time: 66240 Bytes / (5kB/s) = ~12.94s
      So, unless the client will spend more than a minute to decompress this file, you will be saving time... decompressing a few .gif/.png/.jpgs for a page will be just as costly...

      --
      "It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
  2. What the... by JediTrainer · · Score: 4, Funny

    We send you a CD ROM with your side of the program to load on your computer (a 5 minute process).

    Is this the new FedEx super-express delivery I've been hearing about? How much does it cost?

    --

    You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.