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MegaSPEED Web Accelerator for Macintosh  - Frequently Asked Questions

1. Overview of MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

2. Download and Installation Help

3. Using MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

4. Product Details

Overview of MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

How does MegaSPEED claim to be 5X faster?

Web page performance is measured by the amount of time it takes to download an entire Web page into your browser. So, when comparing the performance improvement delivered by MegaSPEED Accelerator with an unaccelerated Internet connection, we configure two identical computers. Both are connected to the Internet at the same dial-up connection speed and both have the same computer and Internet browser configuration.

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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How does MegaSPEED's solution compare to DSL or cable modem?

MegaSPEED is an affordable software-only solution designed to significantly enhance Web access over low-speed (less than 200 kbps/second) connections. By contrast, DSL and cable modems provide high-speed Internet connectivity using hardware solutions that work with special telephone or cable lines.

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.

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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Download and Installation Help

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 48 kbps (kilobits per second) will download MegaSPEED Accelerator in about 5 minutes using a recent-vintage computer. After download running the install on your computer takes a minute or less.
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Using MegaSPEED Web Accelerator

What ports does the MegaSPEED Accelerator use?

The MegaSPEED Accelerator uses two ports. If you are encountering errors preventing you from using the accelerator, please ensure the following ports are open in any firewall software you are using on your computer.

5400 (127.0.0.1)
7000 (216.126.145.190)
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How do I change the image quality settings for all images?

To adjust the image quality, slide the bar located on the "Images" tab of the Accelerator program. The two sample images on that screen will change to show you how images on websites will look at the current acceleration level. When you are done adjusting the image quality setting, click the apply button to save your changes.
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What are the system requirements for MegaSPEED Accelerator?

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

PowerPC G3 processor at 333MHz
64 MB RAM
6 MB Free Hard Disk space
OS 10.2 or later >

Internet connection line speed in Kbps (kilobits/second)
Minimum: 14.4 Kbps
Maximum: 200 Kbps
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I travel. Does MegaSPEED Accelerator work anywhere I use my computer?

Yes. If you are accessing the Internet through the same ISP and your system conforms to MegaSPEED Accelerator system requirements you should be able to get an accelerated Internet experience.
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What types of Web content does MegaSPEED accelerate?

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

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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