Faster Way To Surf The Net
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday April 14, 1998
Q Would you be able to tell me if my navigating of the Web (via Net- scape 4.0) would be much quicker if I had more than 16Mb RAM and 100MHz computer and an internal 33.6K modem? In other words, would it be worth getting 32 or even 64Mb RAM, a Pentium II, 300 MHz and the new 56K modem (or only some of those)? General browsing is quite slow, sometimes painfully so. K. White Internet
A Adding more RAM will not make any noticeable improvement nor will a faster processor make any significant difference to the Internet speed. The limiting factor is probably your modem or your Internet service provider (ISP). There is no difference between the internal and external modems in terms of speed as both use the same chip set. Your 100MHz computer is more than capable of processing data that is arriving at 33.6k bits/second.
A 56Kbps modem will make a noticeable improvement in performance, but only if your ISP has the same technology modem as you intend to buy. (There are two standards, the X2 and 56 kflex, not compatible with each other.) Also be aware that it is extremely rare for anyone to actually connect at that speed and any connection over 50Kbps is considered very good. Although a common international standard has been announced, (called V.90) it will not be formally ratified until September. However, modems using this common standard will appear shortly.
Your poor response may be due to the fact that your ISP does not have enough bandwidth (capacity to the rest of the world) to cope with the load placed by all the subscribers. It is easy to sell new subscriptions but it costs a lot of money to increase the bandwidth and some ISPs may be a bit slow in upgrading capacity.
To determine response times you can use a program call Ping. A basic version of this program comes with Windows 95. It sends packets to a computer that you specified and returns the time taken and how many packets got lost. This program is run from the DOS box and the syntax is ping host name, for example ping www.microsoft.com. Typing ping by itself will give you a fill list of options. The answer is subjective and also depends where you start and finish. Ping times are the composite of a whole host of individual route times and also depend on ping packet sizes. From observation with small packets, a specific route time across the Pacific of about 300 milliseconds is good, about 600 milliseconds is becoming poor and above 1,000 milliseconds is regarded as bad.
With an external modem it is relatively easy to determine where the bottleneck is. Just observe the RD (Receive Data) light. If it goes out while you are still waiting for data it means that there is congestion between your ISP and the other end. If this happens often, when browsing different sites, then this is an indication that the problem is most likely with your ISP and a faster modem will not help that much with surfing. It will help with Mail and News as these read directly off the ISP's hard disk and not via the Internet.
With an internal modem you will need additional software to monitor the modem status lights and some manufacturers supply this software. If you cannot obtain such software then you should try logging on at a low usage time (such as 5 am) and compare the performance. If you get good performance at 5 am and poor performance at 8 pm, your normal time, then spending on modems will not help much as the problem is evidently too many subscribers are trying to use that ISP's link at common times. Your best option then is to find another ISP.
Q I'm thinking of buying a bigger hard disk, maybe 2Gb or 3Gb. Is it possible to partition a disk and set up different operating systems such as Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Linux etc in different partitions? If not, what is the best work-around for setting up a Windows 95 machine in order to use older DOS-based programs? I've tried making boot-disks, setting Properties settings, all to no avail. I use a P133, 32Mb RAM, 540Mb HD with about 200Mb free. D. Gorman Internet
A Yes, it is possible to boot up on such operating systems as Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Linux and even OS/2 and DOS 5 or DOS 3.3. You will require a boot manager. A product called Partition Magic will allow this. It costs about $100.
Fax your questions to George Skarbek on (03) 9601 2960 or via the Internet at skarbek@melbpc.org.au.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald