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If you surf the Internet using a dial-up connection, you are painfully aware of how slow Web pages load. Propel Accelerator is a subscription-based service that works with any dial-up connection, allowing you to increase your surfing speed up to 5 times. So, pages that previously took almost 30 seconds to load, can now be viewed in less than 7 seconds, on average.

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About Propel
Propel is focused on solving a problem that affects approximately 50 million U.S. Internet users: slow Internet dial-up connections. In July of 2002, Propel launched a new service to address this issue - Propel Accelerator, which speeds up dial-up browsing by up to 5 times. Now the world's fastest way to surf over dial-up, Propel Accelerator has received critical acclaim from reviewers at the Washington Post, the Mercury News, and has won Industry awards such as CNET's Editor's Choice and ZDNet Editor's Choice awards.

by Alex Goldman
ISP-Planet Associate Editor

At ISPCON last month, Propel unveiled version 3.0 of its dialup accelerator. The software will be available to consumers in June of 2003. The new product introduces features, such as ad blocking, pop up blocking, and download management, that are not traditionally expected from dialup accelerator software.

The pop up blocking feature blocks most pop ups, including those that appear when a user exits or enters a site or moves their mouse over a link.

The ad blocking software places a greyed-out image in place of advertising so that a website's layout is not changed, and so that users can see that ads have been blocked. If a user wants to view an ad, they can right-click on the gray box and select "Refresh Picture With Full Quality" command that the Propel software adds to Internet Explorer.

Users can further increase Web page download speeds by choosing the view lower quality versions of images. The images can upload at a fraction of the normal file size, and a user and use the "Refresh Picture With Full Quality" command to view a regular version of any image.

Propel's Accelerator 3.0 also provides the features of a standard download manager—in itself a product that users will pay for. It speeds up file downloads in three ways: by checking for file mirror sites, by segmenting files for parallel downloading from multiple servers at once (where possible), and by keeping partially downloaded files so that the user should only need to download the remainder of the file if a connection is dropped.

The software also has its own drop-down menu (above) which includes a customer referral feature, a check for updates feature (in About Propel Accelerator), and a window that tells the subscriber about the status of their Propel Accelerator subscription.

A somewhat self-promoting performance meter (right) that allows, with a further click, access to a very complex test page (not shown). David Murray, Propel executive vice president (and, like many Propel executives, part of the team that built FrameMaker and InfoSeek), said that it's important that ISPs understand that testing dialup accelerators is complex. We'll talk more about testing dialup accelerators later in this article.

The options menu (right) allows users to customize graphics settings and to choose how much disk space on their own PC is devoted to the Propel Accelerator cache.

Murray says that ISPs are most enthusiastic about the Diagnostics menu (below) that allows users to check the status of their computer and Internet connection.

The software runs eight tests, and ISPs have found those to be very valuable during support calls. At ISPCON, Murray said ISPs were asking to purchase the diagnostics tool separately from the accelerator, but that Propel has no plans to release it.

Also available from the menu are a two minute Web-based tour of the software, a link to the Propel website, and a help menu that links to Propel's online support page.