dial up internet

Legacy_user · 3 January 2004 at 12:34AM

i have a dial up connection which i pay £13.49 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 https://www.onspeed.com you will find details.
ihave paid £24.99 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 £2 per month for 7/10 of broadband speed.
if you are unsure visit the site and look for yourself.

https://www.onspeed.com

good luck diallers

Tim_L · 3 January 2004 at 2:03AM

<CRACK...!>

(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.

Galstonian · 3 January 2004 at 7:00PM

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.

http://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).

Tim_L · 4 January 2004 at 12:32AM

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.

mistral_2 · 4 January 2004 at 12:08PM

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

redhouse_3 · 4 January 2004 at 1:21PM

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!

Galstonian · 4 January 2004 at 3:02PM

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...

kc · 5 January 2004 at 2:52AM

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!

Taffy_Boy_3 · 5 January 2004 at 10:17PM

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.

kc · 5 January 2004 at 10:26PM

they are not an ISP, basically they are an add on you need a seperate ISP and they try and make it faster.

bazzacollins · 9 January 2004 at 1:28AM

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.

dial up internet

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