Whereas surfing the Web, do you end up going to get a cup of coffee, grab a magazine or retile your bathroom between web page hundreds? If so, chances are high you are using a dial-up connection, and a sneaking suspicion may be growing on you: Is your connection really getting slower? It's and it is not. As at all times, the connection pace of dial-up is limited by the bandwidth of telephone traces; however at the same time, the average file size for Internet content material is getting bigger and larger. More individuals are using broadband connections that may handle an even bigger load, so Internet sites feel more comfy bulking up their pages. It takes rather a lot time to squeeze all of that knowledge through a dial-up connection. Providers like NetZero and EarthLink are actually providing "excessive-velocity dial-up." In response to adverts for these providers, you may get connection speeds that are five instances sooner than conventional dial-up service.

Once you consider dial-up Web service, the first thing that most likely involves thoughts is the strange kind of "R2-D2 in a blender" kind chirping that the modem makes as it connects. This track is named the handshake protocol, and it's the very first thing that bogs down the speed of dial-up Internet. The handshake protocol, because the name implies, begins the dialog that allows knowledge to be sent to and from your pc using the Web. There are actually two separate handshakes that occur in this course of. The first half is the modem initializing the Internet connection. We'll call that the modem handshake. The second part is the software program handshake. That deals with authenticating the user's entry to the ISP (Internet Service Provider). When your pc is chirping away, it's introducing itself to your ISP. Excessive-velocity dial-up providers can't do anything concerning the modem handshake, but they will velocity up the software program handshake. On the subsequent page study the usual software program handshake and how it can be accelerated.

ISP Server: MemoryWave Howdy, Sparky. Your machine: I am John's laptop. ISP Server: John who? Your machine: John Smith. ISP Server: I know 32,422 John Smiths. Your machine: He is one in all your customers. ISP Server: Does he have an account number? ISP Server: What's that number? ISP Server: Ah, yes. This can be a simplified rationalization, in fact, but you may get the concept of the back-and-forths that must happen in the handshake protocol earlier than information might be despatched or acquired. Excessive-velocity dial-up suppliers have minimize down on this again-and-forth by making a system that permits the conversing machines to recollect responses to questions. ISP Server: Ah, hello, Sparky. Aren't you John Smith's machine. This shorter handshake equals much faster connection times. The rise in speed varies by machine, however in some cases it will possibly reduce the handshake by up to 50 p.c. What may take forty five seconds with a "normal" dial-up service turns into maybe a 30-second course of with a high-speed service.

Once you search for an internet page on the web, your request is routed although your ISP to the net. After making a sequence of stops alongside the way at machines that assist discover the page you're looking for, your machine is related to the pc that serves the web page you requested. Once this connection is established, knowledge can circulate freely from the online server to your pc. As soon as the data leaves the online server and hits your dial-up connection, that's the place the bottleneck begins in the standard Web transaction. However excessive-pace dial-up suppliers have give you some pretty clever ways to open up that bottleneck. By loading special software program right into a server, MemoryWave they flip it into what they call an acceleration server. And by sandwiching the acceleration server into the chain between your dial-up connection and the web, they can velocity up the process considerably. Once you seek for an online web page using high-pace dial-up, your request is distributed from the dial-up modem in your pc to the ISP's acceleration server.