Performance measurements

What others say

"Thank you for a super programme!
This has been the best value for money I have found. The speed of my internet connection has at least doubled, using a 56k modem."

Andrew McKechnie
Pietersburg, South Africa

"After installing and setting Speedlane up, from the very first download on, I have noted nothing but SPEED... Typically I got download speeds of 0.9-2.0k tops... Now I see 2.5-4.0k consistently.. I am using an ACEEX 33.6k Modem. At any rate, my connection seems more stable, and faster."

Jerome Kutche

Improves Load Time
Speedlane improves the load time for all kinds of Internet connections. There is no easy way of measuring the improvement, since transmission times through the Internet vary widely. Indeed, download times vary with every access to the Internet.

The connect rate displayed by the modem software is not changed by Speedlane and reflects the physical maximum throughput at the time of connecting. This is the figure shown in the 'Connected to' box. Most measuring programs display the current throughput and do not actually replicate the user's experience.

Fair Measuring
To be fair to the user, we are measuring improvements manually by finding the time it takes to totally load one page. Testing procedures take care of emptying the browser's cache, which would otherwise skew the results.
Testing is typically done at night, because the heavy load on the Internet during the day makes measurements vary too much.

Improving your performance
Every computer and network connection is different. We recognized this early on when we developed Speedlane and gave the user full control over all internal variables.

If you feel that Speedlane does not achieve the optimal speed increase, we invite you to test it according to the test procedures documented here. First turn all Speedlane optimizations off by pressing the 'Remove all Optimizations' button. Press 'Optimize' and 'OK' to leave Speedlane. Then, after restarting the computer, measure the load time for a page. You may need to empty the browser cache first.

Now run Speedlane, select the Internet Optimizer and select a different optimization type. There are four settings for modem connections and a number of settings for other environments. You can also try the 'automatic' setting for Cable or ADSL modems. Feel free to experiment. Press 'OK', then 'Optimize' and 'OK' to leave Speedlane. Restart the computer and measure as above. Note the difference.

You can also access the Expert menu which has a detailed help page. Always follow the above steps to measure the difference. It takes a little work, but you will be well rewarded by finding the optimum performance gains.

Certain conditions, such as poor phone lines, overloaded servers and network congestions cannot be cured by Speedlane. Although Speedlane will give you a certain amount of improvement in these cases, we recommend changing your method of connecting to the Internet.

More tips for improving your performance can be found on the optimization page.

If you want to compare Speedlane 2000 to other products, please visit the comparison page.

Test 1

Test description
We used Windows95 on a 133 MHz Pentium. We were accessing the Internet at noon through a CompuServe connection with the built-in Internet Explorer. We measured the load time of complete pages until the loading indicator stopped. Between tests the cache was emptied and Compuserve restarted. Each test was run twice and these are the actual values as measured in seconds. 

Results: Without Speedlane, page load times were longer by up to 83%. 

Test 2

Test description

We used a Windows95 laptop at 133 MHz with a Ricochet wireless modem in Palo Alto. To be more independent of network load we waited until 11:00 pm. 

Test procedure: 
1) Restart system 
2) Log in to Ricochet 
3) Start Explorer 
4) Delete Cache Files 
5) Load www.realitycom.com until 'Done' appears at bottom 
6) Repeat steps 4-5 once 
7) Activate Speedlane 
8) Go to 1 
 

Results: The Windows95 default MaxMTU value resulted in 47.5 % longer retrieval times than the optimum value. 

Test 3

Test description

The following tests were done at 3:00 am when the load on the Internet is minimal. Modem compression was turned off.  The times were taken with the help of NetMedic from Vitalsigns. Three websites (speedlane.com, netscape.com, realitycom.com) were accessed and the load time quoted by NetMedic was noted. Every test was repeated three times and the browser cache was emptied in between trials. 
 

Results: The page load times under Windows95 default conditions were up to 62.3 % longer than with the optimum MaxMTU values.