My connection seems slow. Why?
One of the most common complaints we hear about the Internet is that it is slow. This translates into time you wait while a document or image is retrieved off the network. There are a lot of different reasons for slowness, but they fall into several basic categories:
1. Bandwidth intensive web site design
2. Network backbone bottlenecks.
3. ISP bottlenecks.
We can do little about network backbone bottlenecks and poorly designed web sites, but complain. As ISPs, however, we can configure our hardware, software, and other provisions such that our customers get the most out of their equipment and their dollar. A few local ISPs, including pcOnline, provision their services to maximize throughput for their customers benefit.
pcOnline talks to its 33.6kb modems at 115.2kb/sec and so should you. You should configure you PC to talk to your 33.6kb modem at 115.2kb/sec. Why? To take full advantage of the data compression capability built into your modem. This will greatly increase the effective speed of transmission and increase your satisfaction with our service and the Internet.
Compressed data will still only cross the phone line at 33.6kb/sec. However, compressed data can expand from 1 to 4 times in your modem. If you don't get the data out of your modem fast enough, the modem buffers will fill and modem flow control will slow down transmission to match the speed your PC is taking data from the modem. So configure your PC to talk to your modem at 115.2kb/sec.
As a test of modem performance, we provide the following copy of the new congressional communication bill to test your modem throughput. Click on bill and view the results of your congressmen in action. This text file is roughly 382,000 bytes is length and it is not unusual to see a 33.6kb modem, connected at 115.2kb with a fast PC, to effectively transfer 6 or more kilobytes per second. Give it a try.