From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

Bev A. Kupf wrote:

How are you measuring this increase in download "speed"?
Using an external timer, or are you depending on the
application that you use to download to tell you the
download rate is 3.0 kb/sec v/s 2.8 kb/sec?

If it is the latter, could you repeat your tests using an
external stopwatch?

I could try, but if it is short, other conditions
make it an unreliable comparison, and if it is long,
I may not be able to maintain attention on it.

I downloaded a few things without it, and a few with it,
all with Opera, and compared the indicated rates.
Was about 4.8 without and 5.5 with.

Not a big difference. Something like Speed Download
does a lot more, but it's not free.

Also did a Software Update of iMovie with it.
Speed difference there (wall time) was not much
different than doing iTunes without it.

The chance of it being a password catcher is a
concern, but if the theft uses a port that's open
in my paranoid firewall, it's already out. (And
if they try to use it, ha-ha, big brother is already
watching)

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

Frederick Cheung wrote:

Yes this is possible to do either of the 2 tasks it claims to do it would need super user privileges. Unless you got a authorization dialog, or if
it installed itself setuid (in which case you would have had an
authorization dialog when you installed it.

Sorry about the last.

Which two things? It is a "CFM binary"
(whatever that means) and it claims to be
Carbon.

It does not have super-user privileges.

It definitely is able to detect whether there
is an outside interface. Don't need super-user
for that--in Terminal, it's 'netstat -r' or
'ifconfig -a'

It definitely is able to trigger a dial out.
That doesn't need super-user either.

It appears to slightly improve download speed.
Can't be certain, since you have to disconnect
and redial to compare and speeds fluctuate even
on the same modem/connection. The apparent
improvement was about 20%.

Do not need super-user for that either: SpeedDownload
does much better than that (and can do resumes of
interrupted loads) without super-user privileges.

The other alleged features--I do not know whether
they are real or whether they need privileges.

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Wesley Groleau wrote:

Frederick Cheung wrote:

Yes this is possible to do either of the 2 tasks it claims to do it would need super user privileges. Unless you got a authorization dialog, or if
it installed itself setuid (in which case you would have had an authorization dialog when you installed it.

Sorry about the last.

Which two things? It is a "CFM binary"
(whatever that means) and it claims to be
Carbon.

It would need super user privs to tweak tcp/ip parameters or to affect
memory allocation.

Fred

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 15:55:18 -0500,
Wesley Groleau (wesgroleau@despammed.com) wrote:

It appears to slightly improve download speed.
Can't be certain, since you have to disconnect
and redial to compare and speeds fluctuate even
on the same modem/connection. The apparent
improvement was about 20%.

How do you know it is not simply messing with the computer's
clock (for eg. slowing it down), to give an impression of
faster download speeds? I ask this because several years ago,
there was a "download accelerator" for IBM PCs that did
precisely this. On a 14.4 kbps modem, I would get download
speeds of 2 - 3 kb/sec (of compressed files), which are just
not possible. Finally, I realized that my PC kept losing time
when the accelarator was in use. Timing the download with an
external timer revealed that the so-called accelerator did
jack squat. I don't know if a program can slow the clock on
Mac hardware, but I throw it out as a possibility (and by way
of being a devil's advocate).

Bev

--
Bev A. Kupf
Bev's House of Pancakes
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

Frederick Cheung wrote:

It would need super user privs to tweak tcp/ip parameters or to affect
memory allocation.

Ah, yes, that's true. But I'm sure there are other ways
to speed up downloads. As for memory, that's the _other_ app.

--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Wesley Groleau wrote:

Frederick Cheung wrote:

It would need super user privs to tweak tcp/ip parameters or to affect memory allocation.

Ah, yes, that's true. But I'm sure there are other ways
to speed up downloads. As for memory, that's the _other_ app.

That's slightlyy different, as that other app only affects it's own
downloads. In general anything that is going to have system-wide effects
is going to need special privs.

Fred

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