DIAL UP ACCELERATION
A marketing ploy to lure you back from broadband?

The Wasington Post has a blurb on the "dial up acceleration" feature that AOL and Earthlink is using as a strategy to lure back customers who defected to broadband. The claim is that for the price of dialup, acceleration can give you near broadband download times.

It goes on to talk about how speed is picked by storing popular websites on their own servers and then downloading them compressed by separate channels other than the conventional line (whatever that is). The software then "stitches" the new stuff into what's already been downloaded onto your computer so that you're not "plowing over the same field" again and again.

However, the compression causes problems with graphics and initially the speed increase is minimal. And when you couple that with AOL charging nearly $25 for dial-up, it's hard to say no to SBCYahoo's offer of $29.95 for the real McCoy.