1. Forum
  2. USENET
  3. comp.sys.mac.system

  • Re: TurboInternet

    From Wesley Groleau@wesgroleau@despammed.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Sunday, July 06, 2003 18:38:29
    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)

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Wesley Groleau@wesgroleau@despammed.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Monday, July 07, 2003 15:55:18
    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.

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Frederick Cheung@fglc2@srcf.DUH.ucam.org to comp.sys.mac.system on Monday, July 07, 2003 22:25:09
    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

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Bev A. Kupf@bevakupf@ebv.mimnet.northwestern.edu to comp.sys.mac.system on Monday, July 07, 2003 21:35:40
    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
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Wesley Groleau@wesgroleau@despammed.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Monday, July 07, 2003 22:34:10
    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 Frederick Cheung@fglc2@srcf.DUH.ucam.org to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 11:03:13
    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

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113