[Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
describing 5x acceration and dug into it a little. Apparently there are one or more companies that are running such a service. ISPs are reselling the service so the "accerator services" are pretty much the same between ISPs. In some cases large ISPs might be hosting it in house or run an intermediate tier but really it is all pretty much the same. The fastest claims I have seen is 5X faster and that apparently is only for repeat vists to the same site with static content. In most cases even one of the companies claims indicate to expect 2x to 3x. Still even 2x is a real nice bump for dialup.
Technically it uses a combination of local caching, remote proxies and compression. So on your PC software runs that "intelligently" caches web content. It also enables compression to be used between your PC and the service provider's servers. So the combination reduces bandwidth across the little part of the pipe (dialup line) between your PC and the ISP. In addition, the accelerator provider's runs caching proxies so some current content can be servered more directly.
Interesting concept all in all and probably does make a noticable difference for a dialup user. However, a few potential issues. Now in addition to your ISP a 3rd party may have complete access to your web browsing history. So if the service isn't run 100% in house ensure the 3rd party is a company with integrity and reasonable privacy policies. Caching on your primary disk, as most PC users will be doing, isn't at all optimal. If you have multiple disks see if it can be configured to use the secondary disk. Finally in addition to your ISP pipe your at the mercy of the proxy your traffic is being directed through. If it is underpower or having issues you might not see the performance hoped. The way the services are being promoted I would expect rapid growth in usage.
BTW - You could get the advantages of the local caching with probably far higher local caching preformance by building a caching proxy (using BSD or Linux and Squid). I run such and really like it even with DSL. You would not however, get the advantage of the compression (possibly very useful for dialup) or remote proxy (probably not a huge deal but still a potential benefit).
posted by 216.165.14...
, Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:01:00
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
