Goldfinger

I stumbled across this UK technology and decided to give it a go ... IT IS FANTASTIC!! I have a 512kbps broadband tiscali connection which, don't get me wrong is quick, but didn't blow me away when compared to ISDN. With the Onspeed software running in the background it is so fast I cannot believe how quick my web pages and browsing has become.

See here to have a closer look <url>="http://www.onspeed.com"> Onspeed home page</url> ... and the best bit is it takes less than a few minutes to download and is only £25 per year (or £1.99 per month). Chris L is now using it too and is equally impressed

It quickens narrowband PSTN, ISDN, broadband connections etc. I think it is fantastic and is well worth a look.

Happy surfing!!!

Cheers
Phil

Muffleman

I'm one of the unfortunate souls that although is on a broadband enabled exchange, lives too far away from it so can't have broadband.

I've tried satellite bb and it's not great.

However, I'm now using Onspeed on a 56k dialup, as is a mate of mine. Downloads are still slow as hell, but for general browsing etc, it really does make a difference.

Worth considering for £25 a year. Alternatively, the Opera browser does help with browsing. I wonder if Onspeed supports Opera ? Hmmmm

Cheers


Matt

GC8

Im sceptical; the ONLY thing that can improve your broadband connection 'speed' is the size of your TCP receive window; on 98 its definately too small and on 2000/XP it may be too small depending on your average latency.....

JackClark

This product compress's graphics on webpages and in emails, doesn't seem to do much more. Simple and effective.

Muffleman

Oh believe me, I was sceptical - and don't even start to believe the hype on their webpage. But it does improve browsing.

The thing I found was that within a couple of days, you're used to it and you think it's slow again !!! Kinda like buying a car that does 0-60 in 10 secs instead of 12 !!! If you know what I mean

But if you're stuck with 56k like me, every little helps !

Cheers

Matt

CTR

Maybe Im being dim, but how does Onspeed do this compression. The only place that the compression can be done, to speed up downloading, is at the server you are requesting files from surely. But is compression, or even Onspeed enabled on all these servers? Doubt it. So is it only compressing these files on your computer, how does that help?

If it really has speeded up your internet connection, then good, but it sounds like a crock to me.

Chris L

I have to say it is making a very noticable difference on my 512K NTL connection. I was very sceptical at first as internet accelerators have been around for ages and rarely work. So far, I have found Onspeed very effective. As JackClark says it uses some clever compression techniques which appear to be very effective. However it is working, it is quite impressive and for £2 a month, you really can't complain.

Edit to include a link to the Onspeed website

Chris

GC8

Of course, for a another £2 per month you could get a 1Mbps connection with Bulldog; for £30 per month you could get a 2Mbps connection. Both of these are off peak; taking advantage of Bulldog's redundant capacity; theyre only 512Kbps during office hours but, we're at work then anyway..... I can assure you all that there is NO WAY of increasing your ACTUAL download speed other than increasing your TCP receive window size, where that is a bottle-neck.

Simon

gregh

so I went to their webpage, I would guess you need them as a proxy server in your IE pages, you then always go via their servers for browsing, they compress data before sending it to you.

Which is fine, and from what people say above works. However my main concerns is if their servers go down/slown down you get affected.

regards,

greg

How does ONSPEED work?As you cannot physically change the speed of your Internet connection, ONSPEED uses Content Sensitive Compression ('CSC') to individually compress each element you request from a web pages or email messages using nine Patent approved proprietary dedicated compression algorithms.

The end result is that your web pages and emails load and download as quickly as if you were on a Broadband connection.

When your web browser requests a Web Page, the ONSPEED software redirects that request to the ONSPEED Compression Servers. They take the respective Web Page contents, compress them and send them back down to the ONSPEED software which decompresses it and sends it to the Browser requesting the information.

At the moment we have dedicated algorithms for:

Photo-realistic images (e.g., JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP)
Line Art and Drawings (e.g., GIF, BMP)
Animated objects (GIF)
HTML objects
Text, etc
Office Documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
PDF Documents
Any elements that we do not have a dedicated algorithm for gets compressed using a generic compression algorithm. This ensures that we can still get a 20-30% speed increase on these elements.

We are constantly working on new algorithms to improve and enhance our service. By April 2004 we will have MP3 files, flash, and Mpeg4 for video available, achieving a 300% - 500% speed increase. You will automatically get notified when this occurs.

Muffleman

I.....CAN'T.....HAVE.....BROADBAND.....LIVE.....TO O.....FAR.....FROM.....EXCHANGE.

Also, Onspeed is £25 PER ANNUM, not per month.

However, you are right about the physical constraints of the bandwidth allowable, and so you are not going to get the speed increases Onspeed reckon. Plus a 10gig file is a 10gig file, so downloads are not going to improve, but general browsing DOES improve.

I too have tried numerous 'accelerators' which really are sh*te, but Onspeed DOES make improvements on general browsing.


Matt

GC8

My £2 per month extra comment was directed to Chris L. .....

GC8

Rather obviously I think

Muffleman

Hi,

Sorry if I seem tetchy, but I really would like adsl and I can't have it , have you ever tried convincing the missus that we need to move house so that you can get broadband ?!?

<sigh>

Matt

GC8

I read a while ago that BT were looking at using the largely redundant ISDN network to provide 128Kbps internet access to people whom it wouldnt ever connect to the DSL network; perhaps there is hope. When did you last have your line surveyed Matt? The reason I ask is that if it was last done before BT rolled out their Rate Adaptive DSL service, then you might find that you are now within reach of your exchange. I believe that there can now be about 5500 metres of cable between you and the exchange as opposed to 3500 previously; the signal loss can now be 59db where before it was 45db. If your line was surveyed recently though; youre buggered :-(

Simon

Chris L

Well my NTL connection currently cost me £25 a month - to move to the 1 meg service would be a lot more than £2 a month - so no brainer. I agree you can't actually 'speed' up the link, but you can make it more efficient. It's no different to employing compression algorithms on products such as Packetshaper that we use at work. We've seen dramatic throughput increases using these kinds of boxes (60% + on certain applications). The only difference is that Packetshapers cost upwards of $7000! This is the first time that I've seen a service at a very reasonable price that actually works.

Chris

Chris L

Matt - it's not so unusual. House prices can already be affected depending on whether you are in a broadband area (or not). With more people a)connected to the Internet and b)working from home, it is actually becoming an essential item when moving house (I certainly wouldn't now move to an area that didn't have broadband).

Chris

Muffleman

Cheers Simon, I'll look into it - again. Thanks though, I didn't know that.

Matt

jjones

use tesco isp.

they support compression on the connection. this provides a great boost for web browsing - usualy compression for html pages is 40-50%. the ping times were excellent. the compression will not make a difference to downloads of zips/avis or whatever because they are already compressed but for browsing it was very good on my isdn. i had one of the original "no limts" packs that were in store and used it 24/7 for ages and had no complaints.

have used v21, pipex and the ping times were 10-15% lower with tesco.