proxyconn - Anyone use it? 1

[yowza]

Merry Christmas!
I was looking into trying out the proxyconn accelerator. Does anyone use this? It is supposed to speed up your dial up connections by eliminating unwanted pop-up adds and by compressing/decompressing data. While I agree that you should have a small increase in performance by eliminating the pop-ups, I don't see how you can get an increase in performance when downloading files. Most of the modems already support the compressing/decompressing. I searched this forum and didn't find anything on this subject.

Thanks,
yowza

 

[dddavis1954]

The following is from

http://WWW.TECHTV.COM.

DSL Speeds Over Dialup?

Find out if Proxyconn can really deliver DSL speeds over a dial-up connection.

By Phil Allingham


DSL speeds over a regular dial-up account... that's about as enticing an offer as you'll ever hear. If you're a road warrior, or a cost-conscious consumer, it might seem like nirvana. So it doesn't come as much surprise when one of our dedicated and curious viewers asked us about Proxyconn, one of the most aggressive providers of this type of service.

If you spend any time on the Internet you've probably seen one of its banner ads, or received an email from Proxyconn. The Proxyconn service costs about $9 per month. You download a piece of software, install it, and then you're off speeding down the information superhighway at breakneck speeds. That's the theory.


Here's the reality.


Your absolute connection speed never changes. Whatever speed you connect to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is your connection speed. What Proxyconn promises is "increased surfing speed," which I interpret to mean, "You see the pages you want to see in the same time as if you were using a DSL account".

Here's how Proxyconn purports to get that done.


Banner ad removal.
Pop-up removal.
Using a proxy connection via a local host to provide improved caching of the websites you visit, making return visits faster.
Dedicated servers: The proxy connection reroutes HTTP requests to one of Proxyconn's six domestic US servers that will deliver HTTP data to you faster than your ISP.
Data compression: Data between your machine and their servers to increase the amount of data that reaches your PC.

How Proxyconn calculates speed


Proxyconn even goes as far as to show your "Effective Speed." This is a calculation of how fast Proxyconn thinks your connection is performing. In my experience, Proxyconn estimated my 44 Kbps connection was performing like a 181 Kbps connection. Having talked with the developer, the calculation is based on how much data is removed from the page via banner ads combined with the compression ratio, and the number of cached versus uncached pages visited. I wouldn't believe this number if Abe Lincoln did the math. It's just too subjective.


The truth about Proxyconn


Proxyconn claims to remove banners and kill pop-up. That's easy to notice and it works. However, there are hundreds of freeware alternatives that work just as well. So while that's nice, it's not worth the money.


The locally hosted proxy is true. HTTP requests are routed to IP address 127.0.0.1, which is your own PC. What we're supposed to believe happens after this is hard for an average user to prove or disprove. In this case, the local proxy server caches more webpages than Internet Explorer would normally. If the page isn't cached, the proxy server requests it from Proxyconn's own servers. HTTP data is compressed and returned to the local proxy server that decompressed that data and serves that to your Web browser.


What's wrong with this picture?


That all seems possible. But there are a few flaws. First, much Web content is already compressed, including broadband favorites like image, audio, and video file formats such as JPEG, MPEG, and MP3. So any attempt to recompress will have little value. Text can be compressed, but is quite small to begin with -- and remember normal HTML is just a text file with special characters. Proxyconn's "conventional wisdom" that a proxy server system is faster for cached data may also work against it. Users may get uncached data at slower speeds because there's a double request involved.


So, is Proxyconn service worth $9 per month? No. The nominal speed increases don't live up the advertising, and the additional money would be better spent on a true DSL connection. In the three days since I talked to the developer, Proxyconn's website has changed the language on the site from "DSL speed" to "near broadband speed." So while it's harder to dispute Proxyconn's claims, it's not hard to figure out 181 Kbps is only 48 percent of my 384 Kbps DSL connection.


Originally posted December 24, 2002

 

[yowza]

Many thanks for the informative reply dddavis1954. I kinda figured it was a bunch of bull but was curious if anyone really used it.

zeekstern

 

[ecal]

People should really check their sources before posting from Tech TV. Those guys don't really research too much before they open their mouths simply because few people call them on it.

The fact is accelerating proxy servers like ProxyConn not only compress text, but also re-encode images on-the-fly. Turning 20k animated GIFs into 3k single image jpgs is a pretty big difference. Let's take a look at this page before my post. The text of this page is about 30k. Gzip compression turns this into an 8k file. That tech-tips banner goes from an 11k animated gif to a 3k jpg.

With just those two things being compressed you go from a 41k download to an 11k download and that's just compressing two items! While dial-up accelerators like this do not make your downloads faster, it does speed up web-browsing quite well.

What the client does is authenticate the user and compress/decompress text. Image compression is done on the server side. At least that's what most systems do.

I developed a system that did this two years ago. My clients have been well pleased, I think you might be pleased as well.

It's well worth a try.

 

[Johnny966]

Hey, don't dis Proxyconn if you haven't tried it!

I can't give you a detailed technical description of what it does or why it works... I just know that it does. This is from first-hand, personal experience.

I recently completed the construction of my new home just north of Spokane, WA. Although our local Telco is working to roll out their extended DSL, it isn't available in this area yet. There is no cable TV service, thus no cable modem/broadband.

Therefore, until Bluesky gets their LEO satellite system operational next year, I'm forced to resort to plain 'ol vanilla dial-up for Internet access.

Now you've got to understand, this is after spending the last several years with DSL and then Cable broadband. I wasn't pleased! Oh well, the new house in rolling hills and pine trees was a bigger priority... and I knew that both the extended DSL and high-speed satellite options were in the works.

So, my family and I have been laboriously trudging through 21 Kbps to 24 Kbps connections for the past couple of months. We're only 10 miles from Spokane, but apparently that's far enough out, or the telephone lines are old enough that's the best we can get.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post... I stumbled upon a banner ad for Proxyconn, and after pretty much coming to the conclusion that it would be a waste of my time and money, I decided to give their free trial period a shot anyway.

WOW!!! Am I impressed. I can't say that it's just as fast as the ATTBI/Comcast cable modem broadband... and in all honesty it doesn't seem to be quite that fast. It's closer to the DSL connection I had prior to that. And it definitely doesn't download some things any faster - like when we're downloading a piece of software or an update or patch.

However, I can say that it most definitely does make "browsing" much faster. Therefore, I would agree with Proxyconn that the "effective speed" of accessing the Internet is much higher when usin their product. Web pages load many times more quickly using Proxyconn than they do without it. As far as I'm concerned it's well worth $8.95 a month.

Having said that, you can bet that when the Bluesky LEO satellite system is available, I'll be switching over to that. Of course, I'll also be paying dearly for that privilege.

Bottom line - Proxyconn works!

 

[dcell17361]

I downloaded proxyconn a few days ago and I am very pleased with the increased performance. I used to have cablemodem but the price of $75 for cable TV and internet was more then I wanted to spend. I added the proxyconn to my dial up and I am extremely pleased with its performance.

 

[yowza]

Thanks dcell and Johnny for the input. I can see where caching and compressing can make a difference in "perceived" speed, however, it is like putting 6 pounds of crap in a 5 lb sack. Just doesn't work. If I connect at 41kbps, that's all I can expect. I'm in the same boat in that the cable company stops a mile down the road. All I can expect is no better than 50kbps, regardless of what these companies claim. Sure, a web page will appear faster off my hard disk or memory, then it will the first time it's loaded via my connection.
Anyway, thanks again for the input. I appreciate it.

yowza

 

[bdadeo]

Will it improve video conferencing through a dial up connection? Reduce the delay time?