Dial-Up Accelerator
Propel Software Corporation's subscription service is designed
to let end-users surf the web up to five times faster over a dial-up connection.
by Wayne
Kawamoto Propel
Software Corporation announced Propel Accelerator, a subscription service
that promises to let users surf up to five times faster over dial-up
connections. According to the company, its service may be instantly deployed
anywhere there is a phone line, requires no new hardware, and works seamlessly
with most existing ISP services.
The company says that its Propel Accelerator provides acceleration by relying
on the following techniques:
Content compression
Propel Accelerator is designed to deliver text and graphics more efficiently,
using a proprietary compression technology that reduces the size of Web pages
and page elements sent to a browser. For example, only the text that has changed
since a user last loaded the page, and not the entire page, is transmitted
through the dial-up connection.
Persistent connections
Propel Accelerator uses proprietary techniques to manage and optimize the
communication between the PC modem and Propel's network through a persistent
connection. This may eliminate the time wasted to re-establish dropped
connections.
Page caching
Propel Accelerator retains and re-uses Web pages and page elements, including
dynamic content and graphics that have previously been sent to a user's PC.
According to the company, its caching technology goes far beyond the cache built
in web browsers and other caching products in three ways:
1) Propel's technology uses fragments from pages already in its cache to
speed the downloading of new pages.
2) Its cache validation techniques prevent out of date content from being
displayed.
3) Propel Accelerator verifies whether the content of an image has changed
and reloads images only when needed.
Through its caching capabilities, Propel Accelerator is designed to reach
full speed after only a few visits to a user's favorite websites.
"Propel is targeting one of the biggest pain points for consumers, the amount
of time it takes to load a Web page over a dial-up connection," said Steve
Kirsch, Founder and CEO of Propel. "While broadband promises to be the standard
in the future, the majority of Web surfing will continue for some time to be via
dial-up. In fact, according to a recent Morgan Stanley research report, over 50
million people in the US today browse the Internet using a dial-up connection.
"Considering the economic climate, and the state of the industry, Propel is a
cost effective and instantly deployable way to enjoy faster browsing, without
committing to a broadband solution," added Kirsch.
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