ISP Question

I am on the hunt for a new dial up ISP. For historical reasons, we are using AOL dial up. My basic needs are:
- Email - do not need - I have a separate setup
- web page - do not need
- Banners and pop ups - do not want
- fast dial up, "unlimited" usage.
- < $ 20 /month, ideally, < $ 15 / month
- Nationwide access ideal, N CA required
- Yes, I should go broadband, but that is now my flashlight budget.

I have compared a few setups using the on line speed tests:

ISP "Indicated Speed" "Web site speed tester"
AOL 40 K 30 K
Access4less 40 K 16 K
UUNET 40 K 39 K
ATT 40 K 39 K

UUNET and ATT are billed by the minute services, so not really my goal.

Anyone have any experience with the "download accelerators" like Juno ?

Thanks

HarryN

I have a broadband account, but I helped my mom and several friends setup earthlink.net accounts over the years and they have always been happy with the dialup speed and availability.

Normal price for unlimited access is $21 but they are having a 6 months half price sale at the moment, which makes it out to be a good deal for the next year.

I'm not really aware of ISP's that don't also give you email. If you ask when you call perhaps they can knock a few bucks off the price if you don't want those things. They didn't used to be able to do this, but I've read recently that some are. I'm in the same boat, run my own web and email server and don't ever log into the account that I'm paying for but never use.

Earthlink also has one of those web accelerator type apps. If you have a reliable connection they can be quite good, but as things slow down or become less reliable on crapy phone lines they tend to work less and less. There are several different techniques they use, extra compressions (which only works for compressible things like text and won't make images or movies or music or anything any smaller) and also by eliminating a lot of the error correction that is built into the underlying protocols. This makes it seem faster cause you're not waiting for checksums and ack packets after each one you receive. If there are no problems on the lines then this can reduce latency and get the data flowing to you faster, but if there are problems or errors then you end up with garbage data which TCP/IP unaltered will fix for you. It's definitely worth it for just web surfing though.

I think that a lot of the "accelerators" are actually just proxy servers caching web pages and speeding up delivery by having it locally instead of having to retrieve it from the actual site.

Here is what I use for $10/month for unlimited use:

http://www.hypercon.net

I have used them for about four months so far, and no complaints... It includes e-mail, but you can ignore that.

Thanks - Have you ever tried testing the connection using the on line testers ? I found some using google, and they were a pretty good reflection of actual results.

I am interested in a faster connection than the AOL, but lower price. I already tried one discount service, and it was only 16 K for an indicated 40 K connection - and yes, it really was that slow.

I have DSL at home, but when I travel I use Netzero. It is free up to 10 hours a month, but with banners that suck up bandwidth, but if you pay the whopping $9.95 a month you get no banners and unlimited time, and I usually connected in the 40's, and you can dialup locally from everywhere I have been (a LOT of places). It's worth a free trial, but remember the free version is crippled and some of your bandwidth is used up.

If I didn't have DSL I would go that route.

Oh for a speed check go to

http://speedtest.dslreports.com

Thanks - I have run speed test on several ISP's already, but I had to sign up for them first. Perhaps if other people with dial up ISP's would post their "indicated" vs "test" speed, that would help. I am looking for straight dial up with minimal adds.

I would not worry about testing the speed. The limiting factor is going to probably be the phone lines in your area, or the 56K barrier. Those speed tests are for cable/dsl services to make sure that you are getting the high speed that you paid for. If you are on dial-up, then ANY ISP can deliver 56K.

For example, my modem only connects at around 28K, due to my phone lines. My ISP can keep up with my modem, no problem.

I have Earthlink and it seems OK. 48-49kbaud typical connections. Per Brock's test, 39K download, 24K upload.

I do have Earthlink's accelerator loaded (Propel Software, if you want to look at their site).

I am kind of iffy on its claimed advantages over simple caching--but there is one thing I do like very much. It (I believe that this is what it does) downloads your requested URL on a fast link to their server, and besides normal data compression, it also runs compression on pictures. I swear that I could be on DSL for how fast the pictures download--and their resolution (I have medium compression) is good enough 99% of the time. If I want to see a picture (or a whole page) in native resolution, I can right click and redownload (of course, this is pretty slow).

If you visit web sites with lots of photographs, and can live with lower resolutions, the Propel accelerator is not a bad deal (free with a standard Earthlink dialup) for those of us with dial-up accounts (Propel will disable itself if it finds that you are on a 200k+ connection).

-Bill

I can tell you one not to use. I have erols which has been bought by RCN. It's terrible, at least the service I get here. I haven't changed yet because I'm planning on moving one of these days.

Harrkev, I wish you were right about any dial up ISP being able to keep up with a "normal" dial up modem. I have seen the 28 K line quality problem esp. in TX.

If you look at my original post, I have tested 4 (2 were work, 2 were tested personally). The ISPs are putting throttles on the connection (by overselling the capacity), so the actual experience easily various by 2X for the same connection speed.

Take support into consideration. I work for MSN (Support) so I'm going to take a second and plug them. We have 24/7/365 support--all toll free. Then again you don't always get the best agents /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif so take that for what it's worth.

I think MSN is $21.95/month these days. Nation wide access and you can use our client--but you don't have too, you can connect to MSN using a normal windows Dial UP Connection. Just gotta know the trick /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Saaby,

Is that why you have a Mac? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif

It seems too that they would get suspicious when you tell someone to hit command + option + delete.

Or does this mean that MSN is actually hosted on Macs?

Mutech

I've been with www.access4less.net for about a year now. No complaints. No busy signals.

Best of all $5.95 a month unlimited!!

EDIT: Just check my speed over at http://speedtest.dslreports.com and I get 40 K download speed.
Bandwidth meter at cnet.com says I get 41.1 K

I'm a jack of all trades. I support Macs by day (Somebody, ahem, has to keep the Macs at school running) and PCs by night. I want to transfer over to the Mac team but can't...yet

I am not sure what to say re: access4less. It sounds like you have an excellent connection, and of course the great price. Even with their tech support, I could not get above 16 k. Obviously, if I had acheived that kind of connection, I would not have dropped it. (I was paying for my primary, and the test ISP while I figured things out).

hmmm - maybe I did something wrong - normally, I am pretty good with pc config setups. (but still thinking about Linux, worms are driving me crazy) I have it on one PC, but having WAF challenges.

My brother in law has MSN, a MAC, and great support. For some crazy reason, I cannot get him to run a speed test, so I have no idea if it is any faster than mine.

The basic problem is, if I stay on dial up, I want to substantially drop the cost and have a decent connection.

If I keep paying near my current price point, for a little more, I can get broadband. My wife is into budget cutting.

I've also got access4less, for roaming access when I'm away from my cable access at home, and it's worked fine for me so far. I don't really make a note of speed test values, but I just crank up my patience knob when I use it, since I'm used to broadband speeds at home. I'd probably scrutinize it more if it were my primary access, but otherwise it seems to suit my purposes on the road, giving a sufficiently comprehensive list of local access numbers nationwide.

[ QUOTE ]
HarryN said:
I am not sure what to say re: access4less. It sounds like you have an excellent connection, and of course the great price. Even with their tech support, I could not get above 16 k. Obviously, if I had acheived that kind of connection, I would not have dropped it. (I was paying for my primary, and the test ISP while I figured things out).

hmmm - maybe I did something wrong - normally, I am pretty good with pc config setups. (but still thinking about Linux, worms are driving me crazy) I have it on one PC, but having WAF challenges.


[/ QUOTE ]

I guess it could vary depending on many things. Sounds like their local numbers have a problem. Only suggestion is to try several of the local numbers in your area ( you may have already done this). I know that for my local area they have roughly 10 different numbers.

I wish I could think of something else but I can't. I love paying only $5.95 a month. I just laugh at these people paying $20 for dial up.