Web accelerators explain please

[zapoqx]

Ok, I gotta know this, what is the point of web accelerators?? I mean the last time I used one waaayyyy back with netzero and dial-up, I had used one and while I did notice increase on the speed of loading a web page, for the most part, it just decreased the quality of images unless you tell it to show the said image in its highest form.

I saw google has a web accelerator, but I mean, does it do anything different or does it do the same thing as what I said before?

 

[muzikool]

While you look at a page online the web accelerator starts caching the pages that are linked from it, that way when you click one of the links, some of the content on the following page has already been downloaded. That's the way they worked back in the day when I tried them -- things may have changed some but I haven't looked at them in years.

I really don't see the point in using one if you have broadband. I mean, it might provide a small increase in the speed of page loads, but being on broadband should probably be good enough on its own.

 

[zeke_mo]

Some of the older accelerators would just increase the size of your browsers cache so when you went back to a page it would load faster


btw your avatar is really creepy

 

[zapoqx]

Thanks for the explanation. I never seen though about what you say of the browsers cache nor the pre-loading some content of a pages in a link ahead of time.

 

[LordOfLA]

googles web accellerator pre-loads all external links to about 3 deep. so you are preloading another 3 sites at anyone time. the probability of you clicking a pre-loaded link is very small so it just wastes bandwidth rather than speeding anything up.

If you want your connection to go faster, pay more.

 

[Johnny]

Yeah, Web accelerators are not worth the time or effort. They don't make any noticeable changes. In fact, some of them put some stupid third party spyware peace of crap in your system.