Preserved Topic: For all dial-up users...read!

Now, that is coolness! Software boosts dial-up service

quote:

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The ISPs are using SlipStream's Web Accelerator, software that uses an algorithm designed by the company's co-founders, En-hui Yang and Ajit Singh, to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. The compression rate is about 40 to one for text, and two to one for images, Mr. Neumann said. What this means for subscribers using an existing dial-up modem is that they can surf the Internet up to five times faster, he said.

--Globetechnology.com

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Where can you download this program? I only skimmed through the page...so not sure if it was there.

"You don't know how paralysing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter: you can't do a thing." - Vincent Van Gogh

This is great!
I can't hardly wait until v.92 becomes standard.
I hope it comes before I move out because then
I'll get 2mbit!

lol.
Modems have been compressing data all along since at least 1992... so you won't gain much.

TP has the right of it here.

I do hear things about server-side compression. mod_gzip, for instance? Mostly just a side-effect of reading Dive Into Mark.

This kind of compression is also bad for us online gamers still stuck with 56k modems. Latency (lag) is the time it takes for data to move from your modem to the server and then back again. It doesn't really matter how much data is being moved unless your playing on a server with lots of people. On a copper telephone line data doesn't move all that fast and if you compress it so you can fit more data down the line your actually increasing the latency as the data needs to be compressed before it's sent then uncompressed when it's received.

The v.90 and v.92 standard are good things and if your lines are clean enough for you to use them then consider yourself lucky. 80% of the subscribers on my ISP have init strings forcing them to connect using v.34 just so they can connect at all.

The FCC mandates that PSTN lines have a Signal-to-Noise ratio of no less than 18dB and in fact recommend 21dB for decent data communication. What's the SNR for most of my customer's? Ans: 18dB on a good day sometimes dropping down to 16dB or so. So the phone company is barely within standard but they are within standard so they won't voluntarily clean up the lines.

Not to mention the fact that every time it rains or there's bad weather the SNR takes a hit.

So, practically, a better compression ratio sounds like a good thing but I'd much rather have a protocol with the stability of v.34 and the speed of v.90.

Oh, and while I'm at it I might as well wish for world peace. And a million dollars. Amen.