What the deal with high speed dial up?

[Zeke]

Where I live, there is no digtal cable and I have satelite anyway. So, no cable of any kind to house. Satelite Iternet connection seems a bit expensive to me at about $65/mo. So, I'm still on an old dial up line. Anyone have experience with the new high speed dial up? Is NetZero a good ISP? Others? Thanks.

[RickM]

Milt, I believe this is an enhanced caching of info. In other words if you visit a page the contents are saved in memory or on your hard drive. When you go back to a previously visited page it will display what is unchanged from memory (much faster than over a phone line) and only repopulate the changed data from over the line. This is already done to a lesser extend with IE.

The speed they advertise is very dependent on your surfing habits and web site structure. Also, if a site is hosted on an over-saturated server or slow server it's going to slow going for everyone. The XX (5-10?) times faster than dial-up claims they make are under absolute ideal conditions.

Satellite would be much faster but as you mention at a cost. Is DSL available through your phone company? That would be the route I'd take if Cable were unavailable.

[Rot 911]

The big speed up comes from sending graphics with far less compression and pixels. The images you will see will appear blurry as compared to what you are used to.

[emcon5]

http://www.netzero.net/signup/faqs-accel.html

Tom

[EricScott]

Look guys, that is a huge scam. I'm in the technology business. What they're doing is called caching. They install an app to your system and on your hard drive, it keeps a copy of the most recent web sites you've visited. It only seems like it's faster because they're fooling you into loading images and pages from your hard drive. When you go to a page you rarely visit, it will take just as long because it has to save that website info to your drive before it will ever get any faster.

Sending things outbound or getting streaming video or music is still just as friggin slow because those things can't be cashed.

For the real deal, go with your local carrier's DSL or Cable modem technology. Yes, they range from 40 to 60 bucks a month, but in the grand scheme of things, you can do away with the extra phone line and the subscription which eliminates your phone bill and 25 bucks to AOL or whoever you use. You'll end up with about the same monthly cost and you'll have BLAZING FAST access. Example: Download a 5 meg file on a modem takes about 30 minutes. On DSL or Cable it takes about 30 seconds. For Real.

Another option is BiDirection sattellite access. DirecTV and Hughes have combined to make a dish antenna that lets you get DirecTV and Internet access without having to install new phone lines or cables. All internet traffic is received AND sent over the antenna, not using phone lines. For more info, search the web for DirecWAY.

If you really want to do it up, just call your local phone company and have them install a T1 line to your house. That's about 500 bucks a month but you download Porsche pics faster than you can say 'shazaaaaam!'

[RickM]

Apparently from Netzero's site it is a combination of Caching and lower compression.

[lateapex911]

I switched from dial up to cable and the difference is astounding. I have access to all forms where I live and although I HATE the cable company, and would have gone Directway, I just couldn't for two reasons. One, rumours abound that they are getting out of the business, and two, the expense is huge because of the equipment costs, plus the monthly nut.

In the end I had to go cable, and sad to say, they were on time, professional and responsive. Your milage may vary. (They still suck from a Tv package point of view, Direct TV with Tivo is soooooooooo much better)

[pbs911]

I did some research on the various internet connections the past few weeks. For the past 4 years I have had a Microsoft dial up connection at home. DSL at work. Guess where I do all my large web page and video downloads? Anyways, it seems that every year or so Microsoft changes their serves. A couple weeks ago the fastest I logged in on was 26k compared to the 56K I was used to. I am going with the SBC/Yahoo DSL. It will be installed and set up in a couple weeks. Right now they have a special for $29 a month for 1 year with rebates for the DSL modem. This is only $8 more than the dial up service. I am saying goodby to dial up, 5x speed or whatever, forever.

[widebody911]

It's a scam to milk what they can out of their dial-up infrastructure before it's completely obsolesced.

Those of you will dial-up access, you can expect your accounts to be sold to one of the Big Players (SBC/Comcast/SureWest/AT&T/etc) in the coming months.

[hardflex]

wouldn't you be doing the same thing by just enlarging the size of the "temporary internet files" cache?

[1fastredsc]

I have netzero highspeed, not much difference but that compression thing is really good for sites with a lot of pictures. I'm also a former broadband owner, and there really is no comparison. But where i live now i have no choice, and since netzero is decently cheap, i figured what the hell.

[RickM]

Paul,

Have fun with SBC/Yahoo (Formerly Prodigy (Joke)) tech support. I helped a friend work out a couple of bugs with her connection. When calling the Tech Support line the technician was extremely rude, knew nothing other than what was in her script and gave up telling me that there was nothing to do.

I figured it out on my own. Now that her contract is up she'll go to either Earthlink or Netzero (Standard).

[stray15]

I've heard Netzero has NONES of pop-ups...

[RickM]

Nones?

BTW Milt, Do you have access to DSL?

[Bill Douglas]

I think more caching sounds good. I keep looking at that pic of Nikki Hilton.

[stray15]

Originally posted by RickM
Nones?

BTW Milt, Do you have access to DSL?

Wow, i'm retarded....that should have been tons...

[RickM]

That's what I thought you meant. I'm curious as to which Dial-up ISP does not have in you face pop-ups and advertising.

Earthlink?

Comments welcome as a neighbor is asking me for a recomendation.

[Some1else]

Perhaps I can confuse the issue a little more!

Internet access is like most other things. You get what you pay for! And you are paying for bandwidth. As in, how much and how fast, yes they are different. I’ll attempt to cover that in a second.

A regular dial-up connection is only able to do 56Kb (not KB, that is kilobit, not kilobyte), and that is only in the best-case scenario. Chances are you never really get it.

Next cable connections. They are fast, and depending on your local provider, you may even get them to tell you what your bandwidth is supposed to be. I have cable with Time Warner/Roadrunner, and am guaranteed 384Kb upload, and 1.5Mb download. For the most part, I actually get that. But I check very often, and call when it is going slow. This cost me $45.00/month. That is about going rate, and I run four PC’s on it just fine. However the speed thing can become an issue if your cable provider has poor routing skills!

DSL. Flat out the best, but you are willing to pay! First I should say that SDSL, Synchronies DSL, is the best. This means you have equal upload and download bandwidth. These are very pricey and not worth it if you are shopping in the $20.00-$50.00/month price range (if so, get cable). However, if money is no object, shop away. Also understand any DSL is distance dependant for speed. The closer you are to your local phone comp. Main switch for your area, the faster it will be, and you may be to far to even get it. I am!

Now for that how fast part. Just because your ISP promises you so much bandwidth, there is still the question of how fast you get to your destination, and back to your PC. This is called Ping, and is decided by how well you ISP routes you to the site of your choice, and is measured in milliseconds. You can get little programs to test your ping.(try a quick search for neotrace) Simple fact is that most phone connections have a better ping then cable. That is because the entire phone system was built from the ground up as a two-way communication system. Cable struggles because it was originally designed as a one-way system. Granted ping is really not much of an issue unless you are an on-line gamer, but one should know what they are paying for.

Quick side note: Upload bandwidth is what really cost money!

Here is a good spot for info and such.

www.dslreports.com/

[Some1else]

Sorry,

Just realized I didn’t actually answer the original question.

There is no such thing as "High speed dial-up". What many have already said is kind of true. They install a little program that is “cache” like(cache implies it empties at shut down), but more like a temp Internet folder that never empties. Also, I would bet good money that anytime you are online, the provider is logging your Internet surfing and selling the info to anyone that wants it! Reminds me of MS!

Personally, I call this a virus! Avoid it at all costs!!