Web Accelerator is a feature offered on some Dial-Up plans. The service works by compressing text and images which in turn makes web pages load faster. An ISP's Web Accelerator feature can increase a web page's loading speed to five times faster than the page loading speed of their standard Dial-Up plan.


Not everything gets accelerated. Parts that get accelerated include HTML, JavaScript, images, text, and webmail. Parts that don't get accelerated include streaming video or audio, secure pages (ex. shopping carts), and attachments such as video, audio or image files.


A Dial-Up plan with Web Accelerator would be ideal for someone who does a lot of page surfing, but doesn't access a great deal of streaming files or doesn't download very many video or audio files. For webmasters, Web Accelerator won't increase the speed of which you are able to upload or download files with your FTP programs.


Brian Shoemaker is the owner of internet service provider directory ISPShakedown.com.