dial up internet

A question about : dial up internet

i have a dial up connection which i pay Ј13.49 per month.
the maximum rate transfer is normally around 50 kb/s
through reading a reputable magazine (internet advisor) i have just signed up for a faster dial up connection.
you are probaly saying broadband but no
if you go to www.onspeed.com you will find details.
ihave paid Ј24.99 for a one of payment for a year and due to new technology you get around 300 kb/s 6 times as quick.
you do not need any wires any hardware just a credit card and a username.
i have signed up took about 30 mins to download their software and i must admit its brill.
its worth a go i do not work for magazine or company just joe public off the street who is recomending this to people cos it only works out to Ј2 per month for 7/10 of broadband speed.
if you are unsure visit the site and look for yourself.

www.onspeed.com

good luck diallers

Best answers:

• (just the sound of the laws of Physics going again).
  There are, assuming we have not dived into a parallel universe where the whole telephone system has been rewired and all the exchanges replaced, fundamental physical limitations on the bandwidth achievable through dial-up lines and 56K is a maximum even using very smart on-the-fly compression techniques - this in itself is only possible because modern exchanges allow 8 bits to be transferred simultaneously. That's why when processor speeds double roughly every 2 years, modem speeds have remained constant for nearly 10.
  And if you don't have to change your hardware or wiring, then you're stuffed because the modem itself only goes up to 56K. The best this can possibly be is some sort of compression protocol, and a 600% compression ratio is stretching the limits of belief.
  I must say, I'm always a bit suspicious of postings that stress the information is from an ordinary Joe who has "read it in a reputable magazine" - sounds like someone may be expecting incredulity.
  Oh yes, and it costs virtually nothing too - sounds too good to be true, so chances are it is.
• There is some scope for using the technology which drives onspeed to greatly improve download times BUT it depends almost entirely on the content being downloaded.
  CSC (context sensitive compression) is reported here in relation to another company which, despite the patents and exclusive nature of onspeed's product, market pretty much the same thing.
  https://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/31806.html
  I regulary use a compression technique for downloading CD images and it can increase the line speed by over 50 times (rsync).
• Interesting, though my sceptical hat is still firmly on...
  CD Images are if I'm not mistaken in a wholly uncompressed .WAV format, so there's plenty of scope for compression there.
  If you look at the main applications for broadband speed, it's things like mp3 and streamed video; these are already by definition highly compressed so there's very little scope for improvement, and certainly not 6x.
  Web pages are a very different kettle of fish, since they are extraordinarily verbose ASCII text and eminently compressible; image files sometimes can be reduced or even rescaled. But let's face it, the load time for any given web page (given the server isn't completely clogged up with multiple accesses) is not generally massively significant.
• Excellent two experts on this field as well , this site does have a huge knowledge base.
  Gal for future reference what is your expertise with computers , I know you have mentioned you work within the industry ?
  Best regards
• If you visit this company's website, they confirm that compressed file formats (MP3, streaming video)will not be downloaded any faster with this system.
  They do claim, however, that this will be available in April this year, I wouldn't spend money until they have this facility in place, if they can do it.
  We'll just have to keep surfing through treacle until then!
• sansoucci, you are probably right in your analysis. The fact that any large downloadable file is probably already in a compressed format means that any further compression may yield very little improvement. However, compression is something that is improved as processors and hardware in general improve. The useful application of compression is where you can trade-off computation time at either end of a connection to save on the amount of data transferred. Some compression algorithms result in better compression than those used in standard file formats but (until recently) the resources required to compress and uncompress the data often exceeded the value of the bandwidth saved (bzip2 is the example I am thinking of).
  My situation is slightly different though, sorry you assumed music CD's, I actually meant that I have to download CD images containing installable software products. The technique I use is not strictly based on compression but does use compression techniques - rsync allows you to synchronise files at either end of a connection. This is ideal for my purposes where I have a product build but there is an updated one on a remote server which I need to get. I only download the differences between the two builds. The question becomes how can I tell the differences between the two files without actually transferring one? The answer is to perform whole file and rolling checksums on the data then transfer differences. The technique is commonly used to maintain "mirror" websites.
  As for my expertise I have a degree in computing, fifteen years experience in a variety of software related fields and a healthy (IMO) interest in technology. Yes, I'm one of those people who get called upon for advice when friends or relatives are going to buy anything from a digital camera to a broadband modem or (worse) when "windows doesn't start properly" or "my printer doesn't work". I don't mind really...
• I recently signed up for this but am now trying to cancel my order.
  I am currently on 512k broadband and am unable to get any thing faster which i could do with. After a couple of days with onspeed i have came to the conclusion that my connection is actually a little bit slower than before however according to the site onspeed send you to i am running 6 times faster!! I have tested myself at adslguide and by looking at web pages with and without pictures and all these tests either show me at the same speed or slightly slower with onspeed enabled.
  they say they have a 14 day money back guarantee so we will see!
• In essence what these people are selling you is compression software on the end of a maximum 56k line. All sounds a bit dodgy to badge it at 300 kb/s how can they guarantee these speeds when different items on an Internet site have different compression rates, some things higher than others.
  However the price for a 56k dial up connection seems extremely cheep. Is this 24/7 unlimited if so this must be the cheapest dial up ISP available?
  All seems to good to be true, I will reserve judgement unless someone can convince me that this is a good deal. If it is it beats Fast4 who are currently the cheapest dial up ISP offering 24/7 unlimited access.
• they are not an ISP, basically they are an add on you need a seperate ISP and they try and make it faster.
• sometimes the internet using onspeed can be slow and mind numbing and i did question wether i had purchased a white elephant but i read it in internet advisor and not in the back of a national paper so you have to trust their views and opinions.
  it has sped my downloading up quite considerably on certain websites like yahoo whilst communivating on messanger i will carry on using and hope that come april their promise of further changes are passed through and work.
  i do take exeption from some posters that have poo pooed my original post.
  i was only trying to help the slow dial up users like myself who pull their hair out whilst downloading pages and pictures.
  i have no connection with this company as i say read it in a magazine i bought off the cuff.
• bazza i am not happy with these guys, no closer to getting a refund as i emailed them and they have not responded.
  I dont like it that the speed test page they give you seems the only place it works faster for me. Will you test your speed at https://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedtest.asp and tell me whether there is any difference with onspeed enabled or not?
• I am so glad this discussion is here, as I was about to ask about Onspeed following an email from UKfrenzy which mentioned them.
  However I find it difficult to follow all the tecnical stuff. So if I ask a simple question (with a bit of background), please could someone try to give me a simple answer?
  I work for a small charity; we have 6 networked computers, still on dial-up and probably having to stay that way. (Our phones are with Telewest and unless I can convince them to give us a domestic connection their cheapest business Broadband connection is far more than what we spend on dialup.)
  We use the internet for surfing the web for information useful to our work, especially in relation to fundraising! Those of us with Broadband at home find this really clunky, and end up doing serious research at home. We're never going to set up our own webpage or offer services online.
  So, is this compression software likely to radically increase the speed of our surfing? Or do I have to 'suck it and see'?
  Waiting with bated breath to see which side the jury comes down on ...
• I'm afraid suck it and see is the answer on this. It will tend to do better on web surfing than on file downloads like MP3 etc.. but whether it is significant enough is another matter.
  Do you really get no concessions for being a charity? Is telewest the only phone provider?
• Time taken for general web surfing is more likely to be limited by the response speed of the site than the download time for the html pages, which I think by the discussion above have been more or less shown to be the major (perhaps only) compressible item. They are in fact a fairly small proportion of the items transferred in any given internet session. Graphics are much more significant (and in many situations this problem is overcome by browser caching in any case).
  Bear in mind too that everything has to be channelled through one server site at onspeed, which is another bottleneck - this will get worse the more users that are connected.
  This system is being pitched directly as an alternative to broadband. It isn't.
• Thanks for responses.
  Galstonian, I'll feel a lot happier 'sucking it and seeing' when / if I hear that kc has had his money back! Mind you Ј27.99 is not a lot of money, even our Treasurer would agree so I may just do that.
  As for phone providers, when we wanted to link our phone lines (4) to make it possible to transfer calls from one desk to another it seemed to be a choice between Telewest and BT, and TW offered the best and most cost-effective solution for doing this.
  As for the cost of Broadband, the official TW response is that there is no concession for being a charity: I haven't yet phoned them for a discussion about whether they'd reduce it if I was otherwise going to return to BT.
  My understanding is that most Bband providers work through a BT socket, and can't connect to Telewest. If anyone knows different I'd be glad to hear it! We do still have a non-live BT socket in the building so as a last resort I could investigate getting that made live again, but would that effectively double the monthly cost of Bband?
  Ra, yes when we finally get Broadband we will probably opt for one connection and all go through it, although some Bband providers- and I think TW is one - seem to quote difference prices for one machine or for several. Which suggests that you're not really supposed to do that, and we try to be legal in the way we work.
  I know, I need to phone TW and haggle! It would be so much easier if only people didn't keep phoning ME when I'm at work ;D
• Hmmm... I'd be concerned about online privacy.
  I think this system works with certain 'approved' browsers (like Internet Explorer - which I don't use personally) with more browsers supposedly being included in the future. Since I don't know the company from a bar of soap and as most of my web-browsing will be going through their servers, I suppose there's nothing stopping them tracking surfing habits and such?
  Perhaps I'm just being too paranoid?
• hmmm
  I sent an email after a couple of days to cancel but have had no responce.........
  Phoned them today to be told some !!!! and bull story about the system for refunds being down and it will be in my bank tommorow, all this off the cuff without even asking who i was! think i have been had on this one considering the onspeed product produced no visable difference with my web browsing.
• I am in no way an expert (more like a novice) but I agree that the speed of your modem must limit the speed that you can download stuff!?
  Trev