"High-Speed" Accelerators... eh.. not worth it.

[Mr_Reaper]

Well, I finally tried one of these since my isp, Newsguy, offerers it for free with their 9.95/month service.

The one they use is Slipstream, which I assume many other ISP's use, with their own branding.

Well, the one thing I really liked about it was that PHPBB forums such as this one, would load quite a lot faster than without the accelerator. When I open a topic that contains images, it was especially noticeable (and I had it set to show images at original quality). For some reason, when I open a topic with several images in a PHPBB forum, it can take up to 20 or 30 seconds before the page will even start to display.... But when using the accelerator, the page pops up almost instantly... and then the images load at the usual speed...

And I suppose other pages with lots of text would load faster too... though for other sites, I probably wouldn't have noticed it as much.

The accelerator had a nice pop-up stopper, but it wouldn't correctly make a sound when blocking a popup, so I disabled it.

It had some option to compress macromedia files, but that made the files unreadable by Flash Movie Extract Pilot, which is a freeware program I use to view flash files in my internet cache... I disabled that option in the accelerator, but was still having the problem with Flash ... Pilot.

Also, when using the accelerator, my ad-blocking HOSTS file would not function... so I would see banner ads that would otherwise be blocked by my HOSTS file... There was a setting in the accelerator to "block banner ads" or something, but it didn't seem to work.... There were also settings about not using the proxy (accelerator) for certain files specified by Internet Explorer, which was supposed to let it properly use my HOSTS file... but... it also didn't seem to work..... So I was again downloading ad images, and so losing some of that speed I was gaining....

Next, I would sometimes (too often) get disconnected from the accelerator's remote server, and the result of this would be a very long pause when trying to load a page.... followed by an alert box telling me I lost my high-speed connection... When that happened, it pretty much canceled out all the time I'd previously saved.... and it would cause me to be logged out of any website I was logged on to at the time... since my proxy's IP address would change (by no longer being used...).

And as I said before, I had the image quality set to "original images," because I don't like having my images compressed and made ugly...

Well, I was still using the accelerator, even with most of the features disabled, for the speed boost in forums.... But... I finally decided to ditch it, because it was really using a lot of system resources too.... (Win98 P2 600 here).


So... in the end, I certainly wouldn't pay extra to use one of these high-speed accelerators... Maybe other people have better experience with them though...

So I'm back to using my HOSTS file to block many ads before I ever see them, and all the Flash Movies in my internet cache are easily viewable in Flash ... Pilot again. And Google Toolbar for popups, all the way

[HoseB]

I've had Propel and 4 of the Slipstream vendors. Slipstream is faster than Propel, so I've concentrated my efforts there.

With each of the Slipstream vendors (except OnSpeed) I have various performance issues (some like you described), and they were different with each vendor. I presume that means the problems were somewhere in "their" part of the system, not my end.

I actually prefer the images to be compressed and "ugly" for the speed. (If I really want to see an image, I'll view it in IE or Avant, but I don't have to wait for all of them to load slowly with high quality.)

Also, Slipstream came out with new version of their client last summer.... v3.2.12. I find some of the vendors are not using it, and I suspect others are editing their old clients (prior versions) to "read" like they are using the version but are not.... something about a licensing fee they'd rather not pay.

Currently I have no accelerator, but I may have to settle on OnSpeed.... rather go with a US vendor, though, if I can find one which works properly.

Anybody using other vendors and would give them high marks?

[VT@A4L]

Mr_Reaper wrote:

So... in the end, I certainly wouldn't pay extra to use one of these high-speed accelerators... Maybe other people have better experience with them though...

I use VroomSpeed with access4less dial-up and like it -

It's not perfect by any stretch - but I definitely feel that it speeds up my internet surfing - I do things that can be image intensive and the ability to highly compress the images and only showing those that I want to see (seems only to work with IE) is a huge benefit for me.

There's a long thread about accelerators on this forum - that stretches 9 pages - which may help put some qualification on this -

 High Speed Dialup... Propel, Proxyconn, Vroomspeed  
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[Mr_Reaper]

One thing I forgot to mention is that MSN Messenger would have difficulties signing me in whenever I was using the accelerator. It wouldn't return an error or anything, it would just not be able to sign in... It didn't seem like it was actually trying to sign in, because it would fail after only a second or two. I tried adjusting the proxy settings, but it didn't seem to help.

[Boz]

Mr_Reaper wrote:

One thing I forgot to mention is that MSN Messenger would have difficulties signing me in whenever I was using the accelerator. It wouldn't return an error or anything, it would just not be able to sign in... It didn't seem like it was actually trying to sign in, because it would fail after only a second or two. I tried adjusting the proxy settings, but it didn't seem to help.

That is odd. I haven't had any trouble with Easy Message signing in to any of my IM accounts (MSNM, AIM, ICQ, Or Y!) while using any of the several SlipStream providers I've tried.
_________________
..............

[Mr_Reaper]

Y!M worked fine for me too...

I searched around to see if it might be a common problem with MSN, but couldn't really find any info... Just this thread, where a couple people said MSN wouldn't work for them with Slipstream:

 http://groups-beta.google.com/group/nz.com...06959561e1 

[Mr_Reaper]

Actually, now that I think about it, I was having a problem with Y!M... IMVironments would not load when using the acceperator...
However, I am using an older version of Y!M: 5.6
But the IMVironments work fine when not using the accelerator...

[VT@A4L]

Just to make things clear - I am definitely convinced with accelerators -
I can do without the problems - but things are now maturing and VroomSpeed seems to give pretty reliable acceleration
(note: I am using IE6- which is kept up to date).

However the reason I am posting again is because VroomSpeed for some inexplicable reason seems to be down right now... which I am obviously not happy about -
but retrieving some of my regular forums' posts that have photos (including my own) - I can tell the difference immediately - what takes a few seconds with VroomSpeed is now taking close to minutes -

I know this may sound exaggerated - but once one gets used to the speed with an acclerator - without on certain types of pages (eg: lots of photos) - definitely seem sluggishly SLOW in comparison.

So for me it's well worth it.

Of course as always YMMV.
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[ramjet]

One thing I notice is that when I get the message the connection is lost with the vroomspeed server that is usually when my isp connection craps out. Even though it shows I'm connected nothing happens. When I disconnect and reconnect vroomspeed will work fine until the same thing happens. I think that it is my phone lines making the connection go bad and the vroomspeed server picks up on it right away. The next time I have the problem I'm going to shut down vroom speed and see if my connection is still working. That's something you could try also.

[bildert]

I have a similar problem but found the fix.

Very often I will wait a prolonged period and my browser doesn't complete the connection.

This is what I found works:

First - Exit vroomspeed.

Second - Run instlsp.exe from the Vroomspeed folder.

Next - Run vroomspeed and try connecting again.

If it still doesn't work. reinstall winsock - That's what happens when you restart your operating system.

I believe the BHO Zapper application has a module to restore winsock.

Anyone else know how to save winsock settings or know of another application?

[plodr]

This is a winsock repair tool that fits on a floppy
 http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm 
(I don't think it is for XP but there is a link at the bottom of the page for an XP repair).

[tad12]

The link to the XP winsock fix is dead. Try this one

 http://www.spychecker.com/program/winsockxpfix.html 

[degarb]

With the accelerators, the host lookups/caching make host lookup much faster than normal. Thus dump the host file and block ads with firfox/ operablock.ini or myproxy.com.ua

Myproxy is good for intelligent prefetching, child filter, no-cache blocking, even auto proxy bypass (this needs perfection. v7.05 is the brand you want. Also can set ie settings every ten minutes to win the fight with slipstream auto change.

Don't know about the resource issue. You might want process explorer from system internals to set priorities. (myproxy can be started in any desired priority by adding /pr=normal in the link file.

[HoseB]

I decided to give Vroomspeed a 2nd try. (I'd had issues with their system before, but since they have done "major" upgrade to servers + I changed from Win2K to WinXP).

Over the last 3 weeks, Vroom has been spot-on. And if you use Firefox with a good dose of ad blocking and a web accelerator, your favorite sites will load almost like broadband.

As it turns out, one of the biggest reasons surfing on dialup is slow is all of those damned ads.

[VT@A4L]

OK, for some reason I am not connecting to VroomSpeed right now and since about 12:10PM today Saturday Feb/12/2005 -
and I can really notice the difference.

I have a very good direct connection at 46,666 bps via my ISP - evidenced by some pages that do load pretty fast -

BUT the majority of pages I have accessed today are distinctly and noticably SLOWER - especially those pages with lots of photos.

I have even tried a temporary method of installing WebWasher (ver 3.3) to try to eliminate in-page adverts that really slow things down.

WebWasher helps a bit - but no where near as fast as with VroomSpeed -

For example try loading TV Guide's Listings -

 http://www.tvguide.com/listings/index.asp 

WebWasher gets rid of two advertizing Flash panels - but it did not seem as fast as VroomSpeed (although even that is sluggish - I wish website builders would realize that there are still plenty of people NOT on broadband)

with WebWasher there is also the side issue of some pages not loading correctly - like on FreedomList.com...
so much so that that I had to disable WebWasher to post this.

So although I am not happy about VroomSpeed being unavailable to me -
nevertheless it is at times like this that I realize how much I appreciate VroomSpeed when it is working properly - which seems to be the majority of the itme - so much so that I no longer post much about it since it is reliable and works well.
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[aircoolscott]

I cannot get on either today, I have been trying off and on for about 14 hours . This has happened in the past a few times. When you go to their site it says everything is operating normally. One time I called the 800 number during the week (daytime) to check to see what they said. It rang several times and finally a lady answered the phone by saying "Hello" and it also sounded like I woke her up. She said, that yes the service was down but they were working on it. The website said that the service was operating normally so I guess they don't bother to let us know anything when the service is down for a half a day or more
Maybe it will be up tomortow.

[VT@A4L]

aircoolscott wrote:

Maybe it will be up tomortow.

Yes, I was able to connect to VroomSpeed since my first session this morning.

It seems to be working fine -
distinctly better than my non-accelerated and WebWasher assisted surfing yesterday.

So I would say I'm convinced.

EDIT to add: this was the response I got from my Trouble Ticket on VroomSpeed:
QUOTE:
Staff Entry 02/13/2005 05:25 AM by Robert K.:
A major problem experienced with our authentication systems on Saturday
made it difficult for many to connect. We apologize for the inconvenience. Additional repairs
and safeguards have been put in place to keep this from happening again anytime soon.
UNQUOTE
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