2. Introduction to How High-speed Dial-
up Works
the connection speed of dial-up is limited by the
bandwidth of phone lines but at the same time, the
average file size for Web content is getting larger
and larger. More people are using broadband
connections that can handle a bigger load, so Web
sites feel more comfortable bulking up their pages.
It takes a lot time to squeeze all of that data
through a dial-up connection.
3. Acceleration Servers
When you search for a Web page on the Internet,
your request is routed though your ISP to the Web.
But high-speed dial-up providers have come up
with some pretty clever ways to open up that
bottleneck. By loading special software into a
server, they turn it into what they call an
acceleration server. And by sandwiching the
acceleration server into the chain between your
dial-up connection and the Web, they can speed up
the process considerably.
4. File Compression
The key element of high-speed dial-up Internet is
file compression. Text and other files that need to
remain perfectly intact during the compression
process use lossless compression. At this point,
the on-the-fly file compression utilized in high-
speed dial-up can't be added to the file types
specified above because of the nature of the data.
5. Filtering and Caching
Pop-up advertises take up valuable bandwidth,
slowing down the transmission of data to your
machine.
So high-speed dial-up providers have bundled a
pop-up blocker into the software they send to
subscribers. This pop-up blocker is programmed to
recognize those lines of code that spell out the ad
parameters.
High-speed dial-up uses a similar system for
commonly requested Web pages. Instead of
constantly requesting the same page, the
acceleration server takes note of which Web pages
are being commonly asked for by all subscribers.
6. The Bottom Line
These advances serve to prolong the life of dial-up
Internet and provide an alternative for those who
are tired of standard dial-up but not quite ready for
the leap to broadband. If these advances continue,
dial-up may be here to stay for quite a while.
We surfed repeatedly to some of the most popular
sites on the Web. The results varied by site, but as
an example, HowStuffWorks came up three times
faster with high-speed dial-up. For the complete
results, see the chart below.
