I'm stuck with a 56k for several reasons, i'm in the country, short on moneyy, not close to DSL lines, no cable, others are cost prohibitive.  What can you tell me about using proxy servers to speed up my connection?  Any way to do it for free?  If not, what can you tell me to speed up my overall connection speed, my throughput, etc? 

Forget about speeding up your connection with proxy servers. Nothing can make your connection faster than your modem's speed rate. Use Opera and disable both flash and images.

Well that's all well and good, but I use Firefox.  What about any add-ons for it?  I'm using Fasterfox right now, it seems to have sped stuff up a little. 

Depending on the speed/power of your computer and Operating System, keep it defragged & optimized so your computer isn't a bottleneck.  Don't open too many tabs in Firefox or leave too many programs open.

I'm pretty guilty of having a lot of tabs going at once, but I try to only actively load one or two at a time when I can.  I should defrag my hard drives though, good idea! 

Any other ideas?  Compression programs, programs that alter the quality of images?  A slight drop from say 100% quality to 90% would likely work well. 

Also, check in your startup config if you are running programs in the background that use your Internet connection... like Adobe Updater, DivX updater, Java updater, etc....

Start -> Run
type MSCONFIG
enter
Go to the STARTUP tab and uncheck unneeded programs from starting when Windows boots up.

I use Adblock Plus to block ads.  This may help as you won't be downloading ads into your browser.

There are Download Accelerators software for dialup connections... not sure if they work good though.

Thanks for the idea, I went and took care of one updater program. 

I already use Adblock Plus. 

As for DL accelerators, I use and prefer Getright Pro, though I have used Giganet as well. 

Please guys, try to stick to the question. Make a dial-up internet connection faster. Some of those advices are useful, others are not.

-Adblock plus, Flashblock, Image block, etc: very good.

- Unload/disable auto updaters: good.

- Image quality reduction: hard to achieve. Would work only if most of the downloaded images were interlaced GIFs or progressive JPEGs. They never were widely used, and even less now that almost everybody has a broadband connection.

- HDD defrag: neither good nor bad. It may improve general performance, but won't help your download speed at all.

- Download accelerators: bad. Every connection has an intrinsic overhead. If you use several download streams instead of just one, you'll be wasting your limited bandwidth with protocol overhead, leaving less bandwidth for actual data transfer. Only use accelerators when a server doesn't allow to download at your connection's maximum speed.

- Live-saving advice: use a good firewall. Dial-up modems leave all TCP/UDP ports open by default. XP firewall blocks most incoming connection attempts, but it allows every outgoing connection by default. A firewall with custom rules for each program, TCP/UDP port and IP address is a must for dial-up connections. Not only it will protect your system, but will also discard all unwanted internet traffic.

Ad blocking- Even with broadband I have several websites that take time to load up which is annoys me to no end.

And when I mean "ad blocking" I mean breaking it at the soonest point I'm aware of, the windows hosts files.

By blocking several ad services via the hosts file you can speed up sites with lots of ads very quickly.

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Best of all there is NO overhead.

I also run Firefox portable off the harddrive of my machine for some sites and the speed is mindblowing since it is optimized for a flash drive. It loads some pages in a blink of an eye.

http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/d/46955-1/ads+blocked.jpg

Nothing makes me smile more, you can block hundreds of ad providers without them being none the wiser.

Including google who I dispise collecting information on everyone for data mining.

How do I make use, or how do I go about doing the custom firewall? 

Years ago I used free Tiny Personal Firewall, a very small and lightweight application with almost no system resources usage. It was even safer and better than bloated commercial software firewalls. Last 'Tiny' version was 2.0.15, it was later called Kerio Personal Firewall, but used the same engine until version 2.1.5; Then it was sold to Sunbelt Software, who turned it into another bloated app. You can find those releases in oldapps.com, oldversion.com and similar sites. If you also download TPF 2.0.9, you'll get a user's guide for both Tiny and Kerio Personal Firewalls.

Get Kerio Personal Firewall 2.1.5 here:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ihs/alex/keriopf215.zip

However, those tools were not very user-friendly. Either you started with an "everything is allowed" general rule, which is the same as not having a firewall, and had to manually enter each rule to forbid unwanted traffic, or with an "everything is forbidden" general rule, and then your Internet connection was completely disabled until you manually entered custom rules to allow required traffic. There were some very useful and complete guides out there, maybe they are still online.

So, if you find the custom firewall solution too complicated, try first a custom HOSTS file as gdonovan suggested. It's almost like a firewall (though it only filters IP addresses, not TCP/UDP ports and applications), but extremely easy to install: just download the HOSTS file and you're all set.

EDIT: Ok, here are some of the basic firewall rules I can remember to have used, if you want to go the firewall route:

- loopback rule: basically you must allow every traffic from localhost to localhost.

- DNS rules: you should allow incoming/outgoing UDP traffic to remote port 53 on your ISP's DNS servers IP addresses.

- Ping rules: I think you had to allow every ICMP Echo Reply and ICMP Echo Request to avoid connection timeouts.

- Browser rules: allow outgoing TCP traffic to remote ports 80, 443 and 8080 on your web browser.

- Email rules: allow outgoing TCP traffic to remote ports 25, 110 and 143 on your email client.

- FTP rules: allow all outgoing TCP traffic to remote port 21 on your FTP client. For active mode, you also need to temporary allow incoming TCP traffic from remote port 20 when requested. For passive mode, temporary allow any outgoing TCP to remote server address when requested.

- Download manager rules: just apply the previous browser and FTP rules to your download manager.

- Messenger rule: I use MSN messenger, so I enabled any outgoing TCP traffic to remote port 1863 on MSN client. Other IM networks/clients may use different ports.

- IRC rule: I never liked IRC, but if you do, just allow any outgoing TCP traffic to remote port 6667 on IRC client.

I think that's about everything you'll ever need on a daily basis. I left out P2P rules as you won't be able to use P2P with a dial-up connection anyway, and also server-side rules as you don't want to be a web/ftp/whatever server, either.

batracio wrote on 10.07.11 at 08:20:40:

So, if you find the custom firewall solution too complicated, try first a custom HOSTS file as gdonovan suggested. It's almost like a firewall (though it only filters IP addresses, not TCP/UDP ports and applications), but extremely easy to install: just download the HOSTS file and you're all set.

I would not even do that- Just open the hosts file with notepad and modify your own.

This is what I have blocked currently.

127.0.0.1 z.zedo.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 google.com
127.0.0.1 plusone.google.com
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 adserver.adtechus.com
127.0.0.1 twitter.com
127.0.0.1 wibiya.com

Just another line and save. I right click on ads to find out where they come from and block them.

gdonovan wrote on 10.07.11 at 14:16:47:

127.0.0.1 google.com

I could not live without google. What do you use instead?

Thanks you for all the ideas. 

The reason I brought up the program that alters the quality of images was that I saw backa few years ago for one ISP here that they had a app that only worked with their service that basically brought down image quality, to lessen page load wait time.  Think it was a Netscape product.  Wondered if there were other programs like that? 

Ok, now I understand what you meant by "using proxy servers to speed up my connection". I thought you expected to get the speed gain from a standard free caching proxy. Obviously you were talking about a compression proxy.

Well, there are several proxies with compression features, but most of them just provide the source code for a do-it-yourself proxy server. You have to realize that compression is a CPU intensive task and therefore you will hardly get it for free. But if you know someone who has a broadband connection, the required knowledge to set up a proxy server on his machine, and the willing to let you use it for free, you may try one of the following proxies:

http://khelekore.org/rabbit/
http://ziproxy.sourceforge.net/
http://resume.technoplaza.net/c/zrpc.php

As you pointed out, another option is to buy an ISP with some kind of dial-up acceleration, or a speeding service that works on top of your existing ISP. Those services claim varying degrees of speed increases (up to 15 times faster dial-up connections, which I find hard to believe). And they are not free, of course. I think you should read other user's comments and reviews about these services before buying anything. Here are some of the most well-known ones:

http://www.netzero.net/
http://portal.onspeed.com/
http://www.earthlink.net/dialup/

I have also found a free service based on server-side data compression and a client-side decompressing proxy. You have to install a Java application and configure your dial-up connection to use the local proxy. I don't think you would get a clearly noticeable speed up, as it uses a generic lossless ZIP compression for every type of content. Most images are already compressed using a lossy algorithm (JPEG encoding), so a lossless algorithm won't compress them any further. At least you can try it for free:

http://toonel.net/

@Gary, thanks for the hosting info site, was an interesting read.

batracio wrote on 12.07.11 at 10:55:13:

Ok, now I understand what you meant by "using proxy servers to speed up my connection". I thought you expected to get the speed gain from a standard free caching proxy. Obviously you were talking about a compression proxy. Well, there are several proxies with compression features, but most of them just provide the source code for a do-it-yourself proxy server. You have to realize that compression is a CPU intensive task and therefore you will hardly get it for free. But if you know someone who has a broadband connection, the required knowledge to set up a proxy server on his machine, and the willing to let you use it for free, you may try one of the following proxies: http://khelekore.org/rabbit/ http://ziproxy.sourceforge.net/ http://resume.technoplaza.net/c/zrpc.php As you pointed out, another option is to buy an ISP with some kind of dial-up acceleration, or a speeding service that works on top of your existing ISP. Those services claim varying degrees of speed increases (up to 15 times faster dial-up connections, which I find hard to believe). And they are not free, of course. I think you should read other user's comments and reviews about these services before buying anything. Here are some of the most well-known ones: http://www.netzero.net/ http://portal.onspeed.com/ http://www.earthlink.net/dialup/ I have also found a free service based on server-side data compression and a client-side decompressing proxy. You have to install a Java application and configure your dial-up connection to use the local proxy. I don't think you would get a clearly noticeable speed up, as it uses a generic lossless ZIP compression for every type of content. Most images are already compressed using a lossy algorithm (JPEG encoding), so a lossless algorithm won't compress them any further. At least you can try it for free: http://toonel.net/

I tried toonel, and just could not get it to work.  Not sure if it was something I did, or if they are shut down.  Thank you for the other ideas though, it's much appreciated. 

Buck, has any of these suggestions helped speed things up a little bit for you? More or less just curious.

A bit.  I already use Getright for downloads, but since it was mentioned that they can also be a bad idea, I use the free version which at most only allows 5 connections max, so that minimizes overhead.  As for the hosts file, I gave up cause it is a little out of my element. 

I did find some idea on ways to modify the way my modem works and the registry and port setting using a program called Cablenut.  It does seem to have increased the load speed of pages a little. 

I already use adblock pro to block ads and it is most effective. 

I use Fasterfox in Firefox, not sure but it does seem to have sped stuff up, at least a little anyways. 

Any other ideas?