Internet Accellerators

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Has anyone ever used one of the programs to accellerate your internet speed?? I've seen numerous programs that claim to boost your network speed, making page loading and downloading faster by optimizing your connections. Do these really work or just a software gimmick? If they do work, does anyone have a good recommendation of a software to use?

All most of those things are, in my knowledge so far, are graphic compression programs. I guess for net speed, you just have to pay for it. I have Shaw High Speed Extreme I, and haven't had a complaint yet.

some times even if you pay for it you do not get it....Ma-Bell...did that to me..promissed a certain speed.....then it got worse and worse.....each month I called them they adjusted my bill to reflect the poor service....but it got to the point I was as fast as dial-up on a DSL line.....go figure.....

So I switched....rogers...does me well....

Switch to Google Chrome as your primary browser and you'll get a much faster experience as it loads pages significantly faster than IE or Firefox. This isn't just an opinion but has been confirmed by studies.

Extremetech Browser speed test

If you have any type of high-speed, there's not much that any of these 'accelerators' will do. I think for the most part, they just tweak some settings in your registry so that your system handles your incoming bits more efficiently. Really depends on what you're doing, how decent/recent your computer is, and the reliability of your connection. I download a ton of stuff directly from newsgroups from a paid subscription, and I can max my connection out at top speed all day if I wanted to. No accelerator is going to make a difference there.

Honestly though, if you have a computer made in the last 5 years, with a recent big name browser of any kind, and a high speed connection - something else is slowing you down. Crap running in the background, network congestion, some kind of bug, etc. And it depends on what you you find is coming slow - if you're talking about torrent downloads, well that's a restriction your ISP has put in place to limit traffic for stuff like that and you cant get around it.

if you're talking about torrent downloads, well that's a restriction your ISP has put in place to limit traffic for stuff like that and you cant get around it.

Bell has been known to do this, it's called internet throttling I think? Correct me if I am wrong. Something else that indiactes slowness is also a virus, lack of memory (boy that sure suits me at times :-P) and uncessary programs.

Buggernot is correct, they really do nothing for high speed. Dialup however it does make a difference. It gzips the content into a single compressed (smaller) file and downloads the file and un-compacts it (from my understanding).

If your still on dialup you need to dump it and move to at least wireless.

Yes, bell and others can throttle your bandwidth. We run a ISP WISP (wireless internet service) and we throttle the bandwidth on this. If someone is downloading movies and hogging the bandwidth they get throttled back automatically by the software the runs the system - so that it does not affect the other people on the node.

I personally prefer cable over DSL. I get 8mbps (6 on average) with rogers now and am very happy with it. I got 1.5 mbps on my 6mbps bell on average and because of some crappy auto renew contract they screwed me for almost 500.00! I NOW STAY AWAY FROM BELL!

Check out my thread on this tool http://cerb.ca/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=10778 if your system is running slow.

Aww shucks no one is going to tell me I am right? Only kidding! :razz: I get pretty close to the maxium download from Shaw which is around 10 down and around 9 up.

Thanks for the advice. My speeds haven't been up to 1.5mb/sec with torrents so i guess that's not too bad, I always keep stuff from running in the background too. I was just wondering if those programs actually made it faster. Guess I won't bother getting one if they are no help with torrents, lol

I'm not a torrent guy myself, but I'm pretty sure I've seen info somewhere about encrypting torrents so that your ISP doesn't recognize them so they can't throttle them...or something? Didn't pay it any mind though since I usually get what I want through newsgroups. So, seek and you may find ;)

1.5 is fast when dealing with torents or any p2p... Remember p2p (peer to peer) sharing is always VERY slow as your download speed is probably VERY high but your upload speed is VERY LOW!

You may have 8mbps download but most people have at most 250kbs upload speed (unless you pay for a business plan with lots of upload bandwidth).

If your downloading torents and hitting 1.5mbps you found a torrent source with very large upload ability.

Upload speeds are limited with most ISP's. When you run P2P programs everyone who downloads from you must deal with your slow upload speed (Nothing you can do can make this better and it has nothing to do with your download speed - it's on the other end)

Also with most p2p programs you have the ability the throttle your upload speed (You should always do this if you share files) so that it does not effect your computers performance and just runs in the background (also stops you from getting in trouble with your ISP)

TIP: Really you should not use torrents unless you really know a lot about virus's and trojans. Virus's and other nasty stuff get passed around P2P faster than the antivirus companies can detect them so if you download anything other than a photo your taking a BIG chance.

Even trusted sources are subject to nasty stuff. If it contains a virus/trojan that the antivirus scanners do not have the "DNA SIGNATURE" the scans come back as virus free (giving you the impression that it is safe). Really nothing is safe.

This is why you should never open a email attachment (even from a trusted friend) as the email is P2P (Peer 2 Peer) transmitted from one person directly to another. If you buy software from the company and download it from a trusted company you are MUCH more safe.

Any software that is "cracked" or has a "Serial Key Generator" will most likely contain some sort of nasty code (spyware to a full trojan) as the software pirates these days often have a very different (sometimes profitable) agenda.