Justin... Jan....
Quote from the Onspeed FAQ's...
As you cannot physically change the speed of your Internet connection, ONSPEED uses a technology called Content Sensitive Compression ('CSC') to individually compress each element of a web page or email using various compression algorithms based on a patent approved proprietary technology. The end result is that your web pages and emails (PC only) load and download faster using your existing Internet connection.
For the non-techies...That's a bit like loading the same number of passengers normally carried on a four coach train into a two coach train and sending it on its way... but...it takes a lot longer to embark and disembark the passengers at each end of the journey. The speed en-route is the same or slightly slower, but taking into account the loading and unloading times, the overall speed is slower.
I'm pretty sure what they are doing is this; they take a specific picture and text message from their server, compress it using their own software then export it at whatever speed their server happens to be running at. The software you load as an onspeed subscriber then de-compresses the information and displays it at the same time sending back a handshake 'message received' signal to their server. When you run their speedtest, the round trip travel time is measured and divided by the number of bits in the original message. Given that the speed figure obtained from this calculation includes encryption and decryption time it will always be substantially lower than the actual raw speed of the results obtained from Speedtest.
Sorry but introducing a bit of thread drift...
Out here in Telefonica's third world, we are currently engaged in an ongoing battle to get ADSL speeds anything remotely like those that you are receiving...or indeed the speeds we are contracted to receive.
We are contracted to a 3Mbps / 320Kbps service (the fastest we can get here) and at the moment, with most of European business online and the East coast of America just waking up and opening for business, we are seeing download speeds measured on Speedtest and Telefonica's own ADSL speed tester , of just 550Kbps down and 150Kbps up and it will get progressively worse as the day wears on and more parts of America open for business.
With Onspeed's speed tester we are showing just 400Kbps...
Makes a huge cynical joke of Telefonicas motto 'Compartida la vida es mas'
We are it seems 'compartir con los demás te del mundo'. Our local area is saturated and completely overloaded.
At these low speeds it is virtually impossible to watch youtube videos, gmail takes forever to open (if it opens at all), uploading stuff to photobucket is impossible, and as for updating the many blogs which we run forget it, it isn't going to happen! This has been the case for the last three months and Telefonica's response is always the same... "We are aware of the problem and are working towards a solution..."
We cannot subscribe to Wimax services because we have no line of sight to the nearest mast, cannot use 3G services for the same reason, and Satellite Internet is a non-starter because of the high installation costs and subscription charges which for us and our internet usage would cost well over 100 Euros per month for a service which is capped and subject to a so-called 'Fair Usage Policy! Essentially we are st*ffed until Telefonica get their finger out and do something to double the capacity of the local infrastructure... End of rant, end of thread drift!
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