What is a Web Accelerator ?

Who doesn't want a faster internet connection? Especially those who are still using dial-up. Web accelerators claim to speed up your connection making pages load faster but do they?

Yes and No. There are two kinds of accelerators: software and server accelerators.

With the software type, pages do load faster, but it's just "smoke and mirrors". Most grab all the pages for each link on a page and "prefetches" them. So, since pages are pre-loading behind the scenes, it gives the illusion of a faster internet connection.

A down side is that they clog up your temporary internet files or, if they have their own cache file, they take up space on your computer. If you go to a page with hundreds of links you could end up with a full cache in no time. You'll also end up with more cookies. Some may even cache secure pages that contain passwords and other sensitive data.

High-speed dial up ISP's often use a special server called an "acceleration server". The A.S. uses a fast broadband connection to request the web page for you then caches the page, compresses data, filters out pop-ups, then sends it to you. The software provided by your ISP then uncompressed it. This all makes it seem up to five-times faster.

It's great for text, HTML code, and JavaScript, but secure pages, downloads, and streaming media usually will not be accelerated. A down side is that photos and graphics are usually compressed and when you get them, the quality is diminished if you get them at all (if you are on high-speed dial up and get the dreaded red X where a graphic should be, this may be the reason). The image size may shrink as much as 50% and go from crisp to cruddy.

If you don't mind trading picture quality loss for a faster connection, then go for high-speed dial up. Some do give you the option to control how much graphics are compressed, so check for this feature if you are having problems getting pictures.