As we all know, Dial-up internet really sucks when it comes to speed. But comparatively low charges makes many users to stick on to their Dial-up plans. Another option there is to  make some changes in hidden operating system settings related to internet, and bring maximum speed from existing Dial-up plan. These settings can be done manually or by using software. Onspeed is such a software that can speed up normal dial up internet to 20-30% and broadband to about 10%. Onspeed is a shareware but here you can download onspeed full version through a promotional offer.

Onspeed is trusted software provider who are having more than half million customers. Their technology CSC (Content Sensitive Compression ) compresses web pages and emails, before they are sent to users browser. It is somewhat similar to the technology used in Opera mobile browser. They compress almost all static and dynamic websites with graphics and images. Unfortunately this technology doesn’t work with streaming videos and SSL secured websites. Here Onspeed uses their compression servers to speed up dial-up and broadband connection of licensees. So you have to license Onspeed with  about £25/ year.

Thanks to Tata communication service YuvaYantra. Now they are offering full version of Onspeed 6 for free. And this offer is available only for Indian customers. Others may also access this offer by using  Indian proxies or VPN.You can also check their previous free Kaspersky Antivirus offer.

Download Onspeed 6 full version here.

(It seems that Tata closed YuvaYantra site and its operations. So download link is no more available.)

Fee months back , I wrote an article on how to speed up Firefox 3 . But that method actually concentrated on few manual optimization methods for tweaking Firefox memory usage and other network settings .But there are few software tools that can reduce the normal Firefox memory usage to near 880KB and network speed to almost double the existing value .

Speed Up Firefox  3 network settings :

You can speed up firefox 3 by optimizing Firefox’s hidden network settings . Firetune is a free software that adjusts these settings semi-automatically  .

You can select your computers’ configuration profile and tweaking a tweaking based on that.

Speed up Firefox 3 by reducing memory usage :

Firefox 3 is really a memory hog , if lot of addons are used or when multiple tabs are opened . In my case it went to approximately 100MB as shown below .

After using Firefox ultimate optimizer ,memory usage was reduced to an amazing 960KB .

I don’t know how they made it possible . But it is possible anyways .

Requirements are .NET framework 2.1 and Microsoft Windows XP (All versions) .

Though Firefox is the present fastest browser ,there are few customizations that can still speed up Firefox 3 . The default Firefox configurations are set for Dial up users .So if you have a broadband internet connection , you can make Firefox 3 to load multiple pages by allowing the pipelining feature . That is , multiple connections can be used to load a single page ,there by improving the browser speed.

Here’s how you can do that ;

Open a Blank window and  type about:config in the address bar and hit enter (press I promise,continue for FF3)

In the filter box search for term “network”. Now to speed up Firefox 3,change the following terms as shown below.

change network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipeliningto “true” (Double click)
change network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to a suitable higher number . If you put 25 ,then 25 connections will be made to load the page .

Right click anywhere ,select new integer from context menu .Enter nglayout.initialpaint.delay and click OK. Now set its value to “0″.
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on data it receives.

Now restart Firefox 3 to apply the new settings .

Firefox settings can be changed to reduce the amount the RAM it is allowed to use.For that , Go to Tools>Options>Advanced>network and set Cache to an appropriate value .Try 20MB if you have 512MB or more RAM.

There is an another configuration for reducing the RAM usage when Firefox 3 is minimized . Right-click anywhere and select new Boolean from menu. Name it as “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to true.  When minimized ,this setting will improve your PC speed by moving operations to your hard drive.

Fasterfox addon can be used to speed up Firefox 3 by automating the above steps.

Download

Check how you can increase internet speed in mobile devices.

Related: Speed up Firefox 4.