High speed dial-up Internet service is a type of Internet service that offers faster download speeds than typical dial-up service for some web functions. High speed dial-up often costs more than regular dial-up, but still less than many broadband connections. Those advertising such a service, claim that it can be up to five times faster than normal dial-up service in some cases. In reality, while it can speed up some processes, it cannot speed up all processes.
High speed dial-up service works by employing a variety of different methods in order to make the Internet connection seem faster. It should be noted that the bandwidth over phone lines is determined by the phone line capacity. Therefore, the connection speed does not actually improve. Instead, the Internet service provider (ISP) uses shortcuts in establishing the communication, compression, filtering and caching in order to make the connection appear faster to the user. While web pages usually load faster, the connection itself is the same as with regular dial-up.
The key to effective high speed dial-up service is in the acceleration servers. These servers, used by the ISP, do several things to improve the speed for dial-up users. The most common strategy employed is one of compression. Compression reduces the size of images and other types of data. In most cases, the resulting visual degradation is hard, if not impossible, to notice, yet it can make a big difference in file size, thereby allowing the items load faster.
Another strategy is called caching, which means temporarily storing frequently used web page files on the computer's hard drive. Most computers already do this to a certain extent. With high speed dial-up service, however, a server will take note of the most frequently visited sites, and prioritize the caching for those sites, thus reducing the time it takes to send and receive information from the main server.
The other common strategy is to employ a pop-up blocker. While many Internet service providers, and Internet browsers, already have this feature, it is also a staple of high speed dial-up service. Pop-up ads take up a great deal of bandwidth, especially those which employ Java™, or similar programs. Thus, they can substantially increase the amount of time it takes to load the desired page. Pop-up blockers help by preventing this process in the first place.
Potential subscribers should keep in mind that there are some things that high speed dial-up just cannot do. It cannot substantially increase speeds when downloading files, such as music or large attachments. It can also not speed up the downloading of many types of e-mail, or increase the speed of video streaming. Therefore, even with its advantages, there will still be some shortcomings in comparison to broadband.