Want faster Internet? Sure, everyone does. (Who wouldn't?)
Go do a search on a simple term, such as typing "Get faster Internet" and the results are varied. Most of the results that come up link to getting broadband, which is better for all Internet related tasks. There is also another solution, which costs far less (or it can be free) and claims to speed up your Internet experience - online accelerators that run through 'proxies' that, as far as I know, compress data you request from the Internet and send it to you. The result you get seems to make you falsely believe your original speed of 5 kilobits/sec on dialup feel like 8 Kbps. Do these accelerators work as promised? No.
I have used one of these services before while on dialup Internet. This service, Marketscore, is nowadays notoriously branded as 'malware', and definitely doesn't live up to their promise - faster Internet. The service works like this: sign up for their service, accept or decline several offers, and then they run an ActiveX control that installs their software on your system. This software, as far as I know, only works with Internet Explorer, which changes IE's proxy settings to communicate with their proxy servers. Every time you use IE to request data from the Internet, it gets routed through their servers, they (supposedly) compress the data, and send it to you. The problem is that it only works for non compressed data, such as webpages. Stuff like compressed JPEGs or applications and archives, and music/video streams won't work that well. You won't see the numbers indicating your download speed increase that much, or at all.
What's worse is that somewhere crammed in their privacy policy, they state that they log everything that goes through their servers. This isn't similar to ISPs holding IP logs. This is tracking your every action on the Internet. What they precisely do with that data is unknown to me, but it should be obvious they sell that data to companies. They fool users by telling them its "Internet research", but anyways...
There are other services that work the same as Marketscore, but aren't malware ridden. They do, however, charge money. And still I'm not convinced by their promises to "rival broadband speeds." Whatever methods they use, they may try to compress data as much as they like, but the Internet's more than just downloading via HTTP. I'm not so sure about FTP downloads, but I am certain they cannot compress data for connections to peer to peer networks, connections to game servers, remote connections to computers, and so on. As far as I know, connecting to game servers is directly connecting to someone's PC. There shouldn't be someone standing in the middle eavesdropping on everything. Especially when I'm on online banks, doing secure transactions, and I am as worried as hell that someone will steal the credit card number. (Did I mention that Marketscore also monitors secure transactions?)
And the most annoying aspect of dial up? Getting screwed just because you missed the critical phone call. In my days on dial up I was constantly nailed at for hogging the phone line. There was one service that was free and allowed an 'internet answering machine' to take phone calls while you're on the Internet, but it was only available in the US. (Geez.) And your phone company has to be compatible with it.
In the long run, broadband connections do you good for all your Internet needs. It costs more, but it's the true form of fast Internet. (As they say, accept no subsitutes!) And even if you want, there are some Internet tweakers that play around with your TCP/IP settings (max transfer units, time to live for packets, etc.) They show some improvement, but not a lot.
I'm satisfied with my DSL connection, and I won't look back. At least the amount of complaints about clogging the phone line has magically vanished. And my days of leaving my PC on for the night to download 100 megabytes of data are gone...
