DO speed up programs really work?

[lexi]

I lived in the middle of nowhere...Paw Paw WV and don't have many internet options available.

Right now I'm using Mountain Net Internet Service which is regular phone line type service. They say it connects at 56bps. Right now when I put my mouse on the internet dial up icon it says:
33981673 bytes received 2373296 bytes sent @ 50667 bps.
I have a Rockwell HCF 56K Data Fax PCI Modem.

I'm using Win98 and I have installed extra memory for a total of 92.0MB RAM

I'm not sure if anyone needs this info to help me. When I'm online it's so slow it's almost painful and trying to download mp3's or anything takes hours.

Does anyone know or currently use one of the booster programs like Web Rocket 2001 or Turbo Surfer 2001? I'm thinking of buying a porgram like this but would like to know if they really work.

[theENiGMA]

Actually, with a dialup modem the connection speed you are geting is pretty good. Pretty much the only way to get a faster connection would be broadband. You already said you don't have many options, so that is prolly out. I would be happy if I could get that connection with a dialup. I used to get about 43200 on average. I like my cable modem
-KEiTH

[HAL9000]

I have found that most accelerator programs do just that, accelerate you towards lockups, fatal exception errors, and blue screens.

[Confused]

When I had dial up, I tried two PC's, three modems, and 4 ISP's and my best stable connection was 26.4 With one of the ISP's I could get 36.0 but it kept droping. I tried one of the booster programs. Only thing that happened was it boosted their accounts receiveable and lightened my wallet. www.pcpitstop.com will test your download speed and has an auto fix for problems and it is free. www.speedguide.com is another place to look at.
Chas

[reboot]

50,667 is a GREAT speed!
It works, don't fix it!
DON'T TOUCH A THING!

btw, it's www.speedguide.net not .com

[RayH]

If you kill the graphics on a page, that will speed up the loading a lot. But the page will look ugly like all.........

[glc]

Your best way to get better performance is to get rid of that winmodem and get a hardware controlled modem - and possibly slow it down a bit (yes, slow it down - if a modem connects too fast for the phone line quality the actual data transfer speed goes DOWN due to excessive error correction). I have a USR Sportster hardware modem that *indicates* 38666 and downloads at a steady 5.0KB/sec.

[Gintaras]

Expecting 56K?

With my SupraExpress and Win2000, I get ~8.0KB/s, sometimes downloads start @25KB/s

Connection Speed isn't Throughput Speed- which is important.

You might even LIMIT your CONNECTION speed in order to get better THROUGHPUT speed.

I get: 46.6K, 48.0K, 49.2K, 50.2K, Best surfing when I get 48.0K or 49.2K, when I get 46.6 or 50.2K- noticeable slower.

[BFD Deadeye]

50kb isnt bad for a dialup modem. In a perfect world, you should connect at 56kb, but 99% of that depends on your WIRE QUALITY. If you have old phone wire in your house, your stuck. However, if you truly want the 56kb, you have to install new cat5 wire, and then hope the phone company's wiring outside your house is as good.

[Confused]

My problem was external to house and one of the deciding factors in going to cable. I ran a wire straight from the outside D-Mark that phone co. provides to my modem bypassing house wiring with no improvement. Talking with a friend I have at local phone co. I know I go through at least 2 DAC's and that was appartenly my killer. You can talk to local phone co. but probably will need to go to cable or satellite.
Chas

[lexi]

all the replies. It seems that most think this is a good connection ...but I can't understand why pages take so long to load and downloading a program or song can take over an hour.

But after trying some of your suggestions and seeing no difference I might switch to satellite. I've been avoiding this as I hate the thought of paying over $50 a month! As for cable, it's not available here...just Dish TV.

And Confused...thank you for the pitstop site because that really came in handy
and I actually learned quite a bit

[glc]

lexi - what speed is your CPU? That winmodem may be taking a serious chunk out of the performance. That seems like a very excessive number of bytes sent compared to bytes received if you are not uploading, which indicates to me that you are connecting too fast and getting excessive error correction, as Gintaras and I indicated above.

If you don't want to get a hardware modem, let's slow down that winmodem some and try it.

Open the Modems applet in Control Panel, go to properties of your modem, look for an Advanced button on one of the tabs, and look for a box titled "Extra Settings".

In that box, put +MS=V90,,,,300,49333

This will limit the speed to 49333, see if your throughput IMPROVES. Keep backing it down till you find the sweet spot. Next step down from 49333 is 48000, then 46667, then 45333, then 44000 and so forth.

[lexi]

I'm not sure where to look for the CPU speed but I went to the modem box in the
control panel like you said and put in the numbers. ALso in this same box it
does have under the General tab a box labeled Maximum Speed and the number in that box is : 115200

It gives other options for speed to chose from such as 57600 ,38400 and lower.
I'm not sure what these number are about but something tells me that 115200 is the wrong number for this area.

Also I went to the pit stop and did all there tests and they did give me this info about speed for my processor:
Brand/Model AMD K6-2 with Multimedia Extensions
Nominal Clock Speed and Measured Clock Speed were both 350MHZ
External Clock Speed is 100MHz
CPUID Info 0x058C 0x8021BF
CPU Load 2%

Hopefully some of those numbers will tell you what speed I have.
Thanks for replying.