onspeed...

has anyone used this before..??

http://www.onspeed.com/en/?A=CJ&AID=10306647&PID=1374997

cheers!

 

As far as I know this scheme uses the standard dialup service and via 56k modem but uses a different compression scheme so that you are using less bandwidth hence faster download times. To be honest I can't see it working very well, its rather like expecting a slightly better quality spark plug to work miricles on a 600cc engine.

 

I haven't tried it myself but it does apparently work pretty well for web browsing. The basic idea is that it uses compression but it goes a bit further than that because it also uses remote proxy servers and your web page requests always go via the proxy servers which compress a whole page (and all it's images etc) up and then blast it down the phone line and the onspeed client on your PC unpacks it and sends it to your browser. Using that system and a combination of clever caching I can imagine that their 5x speed improvement for dialup is realistic. It also optionally reduces the quality of images in web pages to improve speeds.

Where it won't improve things is downloads of compressed files (ZIP, MP3, movie etc) because they're already highly compressed and can't be compressed any further. They say they're "working on that" but unless they discover some revolutionary new way of compressing data (highly unlikely) it's just not going to happen.

In that sense I can see a lot of people being disappointed with it because one of the main attractions of broadband is fast music and application downloads and onspeed just isn't going to help there (and they don't mention that on their site ).

Michael.

 

I gave it a go about a year ago (managed to find the url to download the full version of the software without paying).

Everything is re-routed through their servers - all compression happens at their end and is then pushed to your screen. It seemed to work ok, most pages loaded quicker - generally there would be a slight pause for a few seconds and then the page would appear complete. Not sure if it's worth paying for, but I definitely found it to be faster than standard 56k (I think it's been improved now, but at the time software downloads etc weren't supported so no faster downloads were available there).

 

Here's a not too charitable review of the service in The Guardian

Michael.

 

I signed up last year after some very favourable reviews in the computer press. I've just let my subsription go today after a year of trying it. I'll let you know if I notice any difference.

Bob

 

Surely you will be waiting for there servers to compress the pages? Compression can be pretty CPU intensive - IF they are busy at there end you will be adding another bottleneck?

just get BBand, its cheap enough now.

 

lAmBoY and Michaelab, some good points about compressing already compressed files and also CPU rates regarding compression. I know from experience when compressing MPEG video shot with my camcoder (a non-DV one), CPU utilisation can be pretty damn high. I'm seriously considering building a Shuttle with a P4 in it as my main PC in the new year (re-using some current parts in the process). Hopefully MPEG compression is one thing that will be faster over my Athlon XP 2500+.

 

lamboy - on the whole it works pretty well for web pages, the time saved by compressing more than offsets the time taken to compress (which is done by their heavy duty servers anyway and if another onspeed customer has just requested that page it doesn't need to be compressed again).

The Guardian review noted that ZIP file downloads actually too longer with onspeed, this is because it will be trying to compress a large file which will have an apreciable impact and you won't get any compression benefit because the file is already compressed as much as it can be.

On the whole I don't think it's worth it.

Michael.

 

ok, cheers for that - the main purpose would be for browsing anyway...with the odd download - I'll maybe try the free download when I get time..! just that we don't have broadband where we live just yet...!

 

Can't see Tow Law getting it for some time yet!

 

think its due next year sometime...