Accelerated Dialup FAQs

Welcome to the iConsole MegaSPEED Accelerator Client - powered by SlipStream.

FAQ
This section gives the most frequently asked questions about this client.  Anything from an Overview to Product Details.  If you need something more in depth, please browse the Troubleshooting or if you need assistance with installation and setup, please look at the Product Guide.

Troubleshooting
This section gives more in-depth view into error messages that may happen when installing or operating the accelerator client.  Frequent questions are located in the FAQ and actually step-by-step installation is located in the product guide.

Product Guide
This section will assist you in step-by-step installation and operation of your Accelerator client which includes screenshots.  If you are looking for quick answers, please look at our FAQ or Troubleshooting sections (above).

1. Overview of MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

• How does MegaSPEED claim to be 5X faster?
• How does MegaSPEED's solution compare to DSL or cable modem?
• What are the privacy implications of using MegaSPEED Accelerator?

2.  Download and Installation Help

• Why can't I open the MegaSPEED Accelerator installation file after I download it?
• How long will it take to download MegaSPEED Accelerator?

3.  Using MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

• Is MegaSPEED Accelerator installed, active, and enabled on your computer?
• How do I change the image quality settings for all images?
• How do I start MegaSPEED Web Accelerator?
• How do I turn off the Pop-up Blocker?
• How do I uninstall MegaSPEED Accelerator?
• How do I see the original graphic quality of specific image or web page?

4.  Product Details

• How do I use other browsers with my Web Accelerator?
• What types of Web content does MegaSPEED accelerate?
• Are ad blockers, popup stoppers, personal firewalls and other utilities compatible with MegaSPEED Accelerator?
• Does MegaSPEED Web Accelerator speed up email access?
• What are the system requirements for MegaSPEED Accelerator?
• I travel.  Does MegaSPEED Accelerator work anywhere I use my PC?

Section 1 - Overview of MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

Using an automated browsing measurement tool (i.e. a surfing "bot"), both computers visit the same Web pages multiple times. In order to eliminate variations in download speed caused by various network factors, we take the average times for downloading the same page with and without MegaSPEED Accelerator and compare the two averages in order to determine the improvement factor for a specific Web page (example: www.amazon.com). 5X represents the high-end of the frequently measured averaged results.

If you are particularly interested in the topic of timing Web pages, here's a link to a site that provides a stopwatch for timing page loads and many other interesting Internet timing tools: http://www.numion.com/Stopwatch/index.html
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The price for DSL or cable modem is significantly higher than MegaSPEED Accelerator. In addition to the higher price, many areas simply do not have DSL or cable Internet service available.
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What are the privacy implications of using MegaSPEED Accelerator?

Personally-identifiable Information on Acceleration Servers
If you have a high level understanding of how Acceleration works you may be concerned that the Accelerator could be used to track your browsing activities in a way that could violate your privacy. We recognize that your privacy is very important, and therefore we have implemented the Acceleration Service so that personally-identifiable information cannot be easily tracked or easily derived from data within our server infrastructure. When your Accelerator client software connects to our infrastructure, it identifies itself using a unique client ID. Our infrastructure has a database of client IDs that are authorized to receive acceleration, but that database does not contain any personally-identifiable information associated with the IDs, such as your name, address, or email address. Further, we have designed all of our server logging features in such a way that no single log contains a direct record of the Web sites visited by specific clients. Personally-identifiable information regarding browsing activities is subject to the Privacy Policy and can be derived from information logged only by applying special post-processing.

Personally-identifiable Information on Your Computer
The Accelerator client software that resides on your personal computer introduces the same sort of privacy risk as your browser software does. Your browser stores temporary files on your computer's hard drive. These files are sometimes collectively called your "browser cache". It is possible for someone with sufficient expertise to use the information in your browser cache to determine what Web sites you have visited. For this reason, your browser software includes commands that allow you to delete its temporary files. The Accelerator client software also stores temporary files on your computer's hard drive in the "MegaSPEED cache". Those files could also be used to determine what Web pages you have visited, so MegaSPEED Accelerator includes a command (on the Accelerator menu's Options dialog) so that you can delete those temporary files at any time.

Accelerator Client/Server Communication
The Accelerator client software does not transmit any historical record of your browsing activities to our servers other than non-user-identifiable summary timing and compression information, and diagnostic information. Such information is used solely for overall system performance monitoring and quality assurance.
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Section 2 - Download and Installation Help

Why can't I open the MegaSPEED Accelerator installation file after I download it?

It is possible that the file extension ".exe" was somehow lost from the MegaSPEED Accelerator installation file. You can easily check and, if necessary, remedy this situation. Here's how:

• First, find the installation file you downloaded. Unless you changed the name during the installation process, search for that. Use the Window's Start menu: Start -> Search -> For Files and Folders...
• When you find the file, select it. The full name of the file should be visible.
• If the ".exe" extension (without quotation marks) is missing, add it. Click on the filename and use your mouse to add the extension ".exe"
• You should be able to double-click on the file right in the Search Results window to start the install.

How long will it take to download MegaSPEED Accelerator?

Depending on the speed of your modem and the processing speed of your computer, downloading will take between 5-10 minutes. For example, a modem operating at 48kbps (kilobits per second) will download MegaSPEED Accelerator in about 5 minutes using a recent-vintage computer. Running the install on your computer takes a minute or less. 
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Section 3 - Using MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

Is MegaSPEED Accelerator installed, active, and enabled on your computer?
If MegaSPEED Accelerator is installed and active on your computer a small accelerator icon will appear in the Windows taskbar area (near the system clock). If the Accelerator is active while you are surfing the Internet, the accelerator icon will constantly change images. Try accessing a Web site and you should see the icon flashing as web pages load. If you are able to surf the Internet but do not see the icon changing, there are several possibilities:

• You are accessing a Web site or other content that MegaSPEED Accelerator does not speed up. If you are not sure what content can be accelerated, Click Here for details on what MegaSPEED Accelerator does and does not accelerate.
  
• MegaSPEED Accelerator is currently disabled on your computer. If you see red lines around and over the icon, it means that the Accelerator is disabled.
• MegaSPEED Accelerator or other software on your system may require special configuration. To review the list of currently incompatible software or software that may require special handling, Click Here.

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How do I change the image quality setting for all images?

Right-click on the MegaSPEED Web Accelerator taskbar icon and select "Settings".  Select the "Image Quality" tab.  Adjust the slider bar to the desired image quality settings.  Press OK to save the changes.
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How do I start MegaSPEED Web Accelerator?

A MegaSPEED Web Accelerator icon appears in the Windows system tray to show that it is operating in the background.

If the program was terminated, you can start it up by going to your "Start Menu" "Program Files" "MegaSPEED" and selecting the program from there.
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How do I turn off the Pop-up Bocker?

Click on the accelerator icon in the taskbar, click on Pop-Up and disable it.  If you are going to websites that you need the windows to pop-up, you could add them to the white list so you won't need to disable the pop-up blocker every time you go there.
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How do I uninstall MegaSPEED Accelerator?

Open the "Start Menu".  Open "Settings".  Open "Control Panels".  Finally open "Add/Remove Programs".  Looks for the MegaSPEED client and remove it from there.

IMPORTANT: If you are using a browser other than Internet Explorer or Netscape with MegaSPEED, you will need to manually reconfigure the proxy settings for the respective browser after uninstalling or stopping MegaSPEED Accelerator in order to continue using the Internet. See below for further details.

Restoring a Browser's Proxy Address and Port Number
If you are using a browser besides Internet Explorer or Netscape when you stop or uninstall MegaSPEED Accelerator you will need to reset proxy settings to their original values (or no values). Until you do this, you will likely not be able to access the Internet.  Consult your browser's documentation for information on how this could be done.
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How do I see the original graphic quality of specific image or Web page?

If you are using Internet Explorer, simply move your mouse over an image on a Web page and click the right mouse button. You'll see that two new options are available:

Refresh Page with Full Quality.
Refresh Picture with Full Quality. When your mouse is over a graphic.

If you select one of these options, MegaSPEED Accelerator will replace the compressed graphic image with an original quality version. When the  icon stops changing, the new image is in place.
Note: When you first install MegaSPEED Accelerator, it is necessary to close and then restart IE in order to have the Refresh Page and Refresh Picture right-click menu options available. 

These menu options are not available in Netscape, Opera or Mozilla. Please follow these steps.
1. Click on the Accelerator icon located near your system clock. Go to Options and adjust the Graphics Acceleration Level completely to the right (original quality) and click OK.

2. Hold down the Ctrl key and select R OR Select Reload from the View menu. The compressed graphic image will be replaced with an original quality version.

3. Repeat step one and adjust the Graphics Acceleration Level back to its setting.
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Section 4 - Product Details

Netscape Navigator is automatically configured to use the MegaSPEED Accelerator.  Use Netscape as you normally would.

For other browsers such as Opera and Mozilla, MegaSPEED Web Accelerator works with any web browser that allows you to specify an HTTP proxy.  You must set the HTTP proxy host to be "127.0.0.1" and the port number to be the local listening port of the MegaSPEED Client (5400 by default).  Consult your browser's documentation for information on how this can be done.

What types of Web content does MegaSPEED accelerate?

MegaSPEED Web Accelerator significantly speeds up web page access.  To achieve this speed up, proprietary lossless compression is applied to text, html, xml, javascript and style sheets  Proprietary image compression is applied to gif images, jpeg images and Flash content. 

MegaSPEED also accelerates email traffic (POP3 and SMTP) using lossless compression.

MegaSPEED does NOT speed up file downloads (over FTP or file sharing programs), streaming audio/video and HTTPS (secure web sites).
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Are ad blockers, popup stoppers, personal firewalls and other utilities compatible with MegaSPEED Accelerator?

MegaSPEED is compatible with most ad blockers, popup stoppers, personal firewalls, and other utilities. In some cases, minor configuration either of MegaSPEED or other products is needed. In other cases, MegaSPEED is not compatible.
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Does MegaSPEED Web Accelerator speed up email access?

Yes, MegaSPEED automatically accelerates your email traffic (POP3 and SMTP) for all popular email clients such as Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express and Netscape Mail.  Other email clients should work transparently as well.
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What are the system requirements for MegaSPEED Accelerator?

System Requirements

Below, please find the suggested and minimum system requirements beyond the basics of an analog modem, a telephone line, and an active Internet connection.

MegaSPEED Accelerator can be installed on any of the following operating systems:

• Windows 95b w/ Windsock2
• Windows 98
• Windows98SE
• Windows Millennium Edition (Windows ME)
• Windows NT 4.0
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP

MegaSPEED Web Accelerator requires at least Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape 4.0 or any later version of either browser.

Note that the MegaSPEED Email Acceleration component requires Windows 98 and above, and that the MegaSPEED Pop-up Blocker component requires Internet Explorer 5.0 and above.

Newer versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer are available free of charge through Microsoft.

For Windows 95 users:  Currently, Microsoft does not permit Windows 95 users to install Internet Explorer 6 or greater, however, Internet Explorer 5.5 is available.

The recommended system requirements for MegaSPEED Web Accelerator are a Pentium 200MHz with 64MB of RAM and at least 5MB of hard-disk space.

Internet connection line speed in Kbps (kilobits/second)
Minimum: 14.4 Kbps
Maximum: 200 Kbps

Regardless, MegaSPEED Web Accelerator will work within your current system configuration to provide you with the best content acceleration.
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I travel. Does MegaSPEED Accelerator work anywhere I use my PC?

Yes. If you are accessing the Internet through a dial-up connection in the U.S. and Canada and your system conforms to MegaSPEED Accelerator system requirements you should be able to get an accelerated Internet experience, if you are dialing numbers from the same ISP.
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