How to Make Dial Up Internet Faster
Dial up Internet is old technology, and most people have high speed Internet now. But some people live in areas where high speed Internet isn’t available. And some people just can’t afford DSL. So here are some hints for dial up Internet users on how to make dial up Internet faster.
You have 3 opportunities to speed up or slow down an Internet connection:
- Your computer
- The computer you’re connecting to
- The data you’re sending between the two
Any misconfiguration on either computer can cause a dramatic decrease in data transfer speed. Optimizing your computer is the most important step to achieving faster dial up internet. (Web acceleration software is another option.)
Optimizing Your Computer
Many programs automatically download and install updates to their software, which limits your already limited bandwidth. Sometimes your computer is receiving more data than it can process, which results in a loss of speed. Some ways to maximize your computer for dial up internet access are:
- Minimize the number of programs usingthe connection. Many programs are configured to automatically download and install updates, such as your antivirus software and Windows Update. While these are critical updates, allowing a certain time for them to do so will increase your Internet speed. Many programs connect to the Internet without you ever knowing. Installing a firewall will allow you to monitor your Internet traffic and find which programs are accessing the Internet and how your bandwidth is being used.
- Staying focused on one web page at a time will allow the current page to load faster by giving it all of the available bandwidth. If loading multiple pages is unavoidable, be aware that your bandwidth is being divided into smaller sections for each open page.
- Keep your computer clean of viruses, adware and spyware. Adware and spyware transmit information back to their source, which uses your Internet connection and slows down your browsing. Viruses do a number of things, from damaging your system files to transmitting your keystrokes to another source. Keeping your computer clear of these not only increases your Internet speed but protects your personal information from getting into the wrong hands.
- Defragmented computers can process information much faster. This will allow all of the data sent to your computer to be processed as soon as its available and will increase your Internet speed.
- Many Internet browsers, especially Firefox, offer addons which will increase your speed. Using addons such as NoScript and Fasterfox will help improve your browsing speed.
Optimizing your computer for Internet use will give a dramatic increase to your browsing speed. While you can’t optimize the computers holding the web pages you are visiting, you can optimize yours.
Web Acceleration
Web acceleration software is included in many dial up service plans, but for those that do not offer them, many commercial software and a few free software is available for use. This software works by sending the request for information from your computer to a company server which then accesses it, compresses it and sends it back to you.
But the software has a downside. Certain file types, such as mp3s and movies, cannot be compressed and sent through the server. Web acceleration software will increase your overall browsing speed, though.
Not only do these web accelerators compress text and other data for faster browsing, but they give you the option of choosing what quality the images will be. This will effect the appearance of the pictures downloaded, but will greatly increase the download speed.
Most people prefer DSL Internet or other high speed providers, but those who are left with dial up Internet still want fast Internet. Optimizing your computer and using a web acceleration software will give you Internet speeds comparable to high speed service, except for certain types of files.