Propel Software Corporation's subscription service is designed to let end-users surf the web up to five times faster over a dial-up connection.

by Wayne Kawamoto [August 8, 2002]

Propel Software Corporation announced Propel Accelerator, a subscription service that promises to let users surf up to five times faster over dial-up connections. According to the company, its service may be instantly deployed anywhere there is a phone line, requires no new hardware, and works seamlessly with most existing ISP services.

The company says that its Propel Accelerator provides acceleration by relying on the following techniques:

Content compression
Propel Accelerator is designed to deliver text and graphics more efficiently, using a proprietary compression technology that reduces the size of Web pages and page elements sent to a browser. For example, only the text that has changed since a user last loaded the page, and not the entire page, is transmitted through the dial-up connection.

Persistent connections
Propel Accelerator uses proprietary techniques to manage and optimize the communication between the PC modem and Propel's network through a persistent connection. This may eliminate the time wasted to re-establish dropped connections.

Page caching
Propel Accelerator retains and re-uses Web pages and page elements, including dynamic content and graphics that have previously been sent to a user's PC. According to the company, its caching technology goes far beyond the cache built in web browsers and other caching products in three ways:

1) Propel's technology uses fragments from pages already in its cache to speed the downloading of new pages.

2) Its cache validation techniques prevent out of date content from being displayed.

3) Propel Accelerator verifies whether the content of an image has changed and reloads images only when needed.

Through its caching capabilities, Propel Accelerator is designed to reach full speed after only a few visits to a user's favorite websites.

"Propel is targeting one of the biggest pain points for consumers, the amount of time it takes to load a Web page over a dial-up connection," said Steve Kirsch, Founder and CEO of Propel. "While broadband promises to be the standard in the future, the majority of Web surfing will continue for some time to be via dial-up. In fact, according to a recent Morgan Stanley research report, over 50 million people in the US today browse the Internet using a dial-up connection.

"Considering the economic climate, and the state of the industry, Propel is a cost effective and instantly deployable way to enjoy faster browsing, without committing to a broadband solution," added Kirsch.

Availability and pricing
Priced at $4.95 per month or $49.95 for 12 months, Propel Accelerator is a subscription service available for PC users via the company website.

The company's customer agreement can be read here.

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