OnSpeed - Internet Compression

[carphead]

I've been looking at internet compression for use on Dialup (ISDN By day, GPRS when mobile) as Broadband isn't a viable option for work.

I signed up with OnSpeed today as they have a 14 day money back offer.

Figured I'd give it a try and they have a Pocket PC client (mentioned here before).

Some simple timings for you guys and girls. These were taken loading Brighthand's front page. Using Firefox (because of SwitchProxy toolbar)

I used Brighthand as it's not a mobile site so it's gives a better example of day to day use (IE not optimized for Mobile devices)

PC - ISDN 64K - 90s (yeah that slow)
PC - ISDN 64K (with Onspeed) - 20

Loading Pocket Pc Thoughts Front Page (Not signed in)

PC - ISDN 64K - 60s
PC - ISDN 64K (with Onspeed) - 15

Pocket PC Thoughts Mobile Page
X50v + GPRS (C500 Orange) - 40s
X50v + GPRS (C500 Orange) with ONSpeed - 40s

On a PC it made a lot of differance in speed. But on the X50v it made no differance whats so ever for speed. BUT it did made a HUGE differance data downloaded. For the PPCT mobile page the differance was a massive 90% drop in data.

So impressed was that I thought I'd do further testing.

My Newsgator Mobile sub main page dropped from 9k to just 624B! Brighthand's forum page (normally a killer on a Pocket PC) went from 226KB to 95KB.

This page at the Gadgeteer

http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/sony-vaio-vgn-u71p-review.html

Went from 191KB to 44KB. On a PC it went from 270KB to 88KB.

Doing the sums on my current GPRS tarrif. I think it's going take 25MB (at £1 a MB) worth of data to get back my total spend for the year. I think I can get that back in a couple of months.

So far the only major disapointment is that it doesn't work with SSL pages but I guess this is a security issue.

All in PC browsing is quicker but not upto the broadband speeds they claim. I'd put it at 3 to 4 times quicker. But PPC browsing is not quicker but the data downloaded is much lower.

[Menneisyys]

Seems to be promising. Hope it's better than (the free) toonel.net service - will try to include it in my compression roundup (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062005CompressionTester/) (also linked from this PPCMag article (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/newsl_jkwg/JKWG_06-07-05.htm)).

[carphead]

I'd been playing with Toonel with for a while but couldn't find a reliable way to get it working on the X50. The compression I was getting with Toonel is good for a free service but I figured it won't be free for long.

BTW your test files got reduced to 140b for the 44KB and 12kb for the 611KB file. A speed increase if 49x was achived with both files. The graphics loaded at 2x speed the HTML at 601x speed :)

Regards,
Daniel

[Menneisyys]

I'd been playing with Toonel with for a while but couldn't find a reliable way to get it working on the X50.

I'm constantly using toonel and am very happy with it. I get quite good speeds with it, even from here (Europe).

It's working great with all the three major Pocket PC JVM's. In addition to Jeode (which has the broadest JDK compatibility, and, therefore, is able to run non-strictly-PersonalJava apps as well, including older versions of Toonel), the latest beta version, .25 (not public as yet - I've been sent it to report on its JVM compliance) works with strictly PersonalJava-compliant JVM's too - J9 and CrEme.

Here's a tutorial on making toonel work with Jeode (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16017). As soon as the new, PersonalJava-compliant version is released, I also post the J9- and CrEme-related tutorial in that thread.


The compression I was getting with Toonel is good for a free service but I figured it won't be free for long.


Yes, you're right, it may cease to be free some time. But NOW, it's still free :)

[carphead]

I'm more and more impressed with the speed of Onspeed. Pages (even the mobile ones like here) load a bit quicker (even on broadband.

The only problem I've found is that I need to stop and start it when I change connections.

[ipaq_wannabe]

hey guys, i use http://www.skweezer.net... its free... and for better and faster compression - its about US$14.95 per year...

my thoughts on it? i wish id discovered this sooner!!!

[Menneisyys]

hey guys, i use http://www.skweezer.net... its free... and for better and faster compression - its about US$14.95 per year...

my thoughts on it? i wish id discovered this sooner!!!

BTW, the commercial version of Skweezer doesn't offer significantly better compression - it's just that the pages it delivers don't contain ads at the top/bottom.

For WM2003SE devices with One Column view support in PIE, I'd recommend toonel instead of Skweezer. It's working just great. I wish the toonel people released their new client version in the near future - I've been testing its beta for 3 weeks and it's working just great.

[ipaq_wannabe]

hey guys, i use http://www.skweezer.net... its free... and for better and faster compression - its about US$14.95 per year...

my thoughts on it? i wish id discovered this sooner!!!

BTW, the commercial version of Skweezer doesn't offer significantly better compression - it's just that the pages it delivers don't contain ads at the top/bottom.

For WM2003SE devices with One Column view support in PIE, I'd recommend toonel instead of Skweezer. It's working just great. I wish the toonel people released their new client version in the near future - I've been testing its beta for 3 weeks and it's working just great.

if there are stuffs better than Skweezer, then might as well check it out TOO...

PS:the nice thing about Skweezer is that i have set it up too as my "Home" in my desktop - and thus browsing becomes simple again (remember the days of Lynx the text browser?)... and fun!!! no need to ActiveSync-ing my favorites since everything is stored in Skweezer

EDIT -------------

Menneisyys

i was able to check out your article over at PocketPC Mag:

saving communication using bandwith compression (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16017)

and i would say that it takes some hard work to get stuff working with Toonel... what's more, this would imply installing to the PPC that would [maybe] preceed "reasons" for other handheld-errors down the line (this is just an assumption)

hhhhmmm... i guess for simple needs like mine - reading browser-based email, news and mailist lists, making quick check on information, etc. Skweezer rocks!!!

:)

[Menneisyys]

i was able to check out your article over at PocketPC Mag:

saving communication using bandwith compression (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=16017)

and i would say that it takes some hard work to get stuff working with Toonel... what's more, this would imply installing to the PPC that would [maybe] preceed "reasons" for other handheld-errors down the line (this is just an assumption)

Well, I've been using toonel and it, as it doesn't integrate into the Pocket PC/Windows Mobile operating system at all (unlike some other, native ARM clients), it causes no problems at all with the op. system. It's not slowing down things either (that much)- the speed hit is very rarely noticeable (when a new page is decompressed in the background, for example).

Installing it isn't very hard either - you just set up the JVM just like setting up a program, copy the toonel.jar file to a specific directory on your handheld, set up the system-level proxy setting (if you use PIE to browse the net) or the in-program proxy setting (in NetFront) and all your incoming HTTP traffic is heavily compressed.

I may post a complete installation guide/startup scripts for other JVM's too today, along with a complete introduction to all available JVM's for the Pocket PC.

[ipaq_wannabe]

I may post a complete installation guide/startup scripts for other JVM's too today, along with a complete introduction to all available JVM's for the Pocket PC.

IMO, that would be a great help to many out there... really!!!

:D

and as for me, this would be well appreciated...

[Menneisyys]

I may post a complete installation guide/startup scripts for other JVM's too today, along with a complete introduction to all available JVM's for the Pocket PC.

IMO, that would be a great help to many out there... really!!!

:D

and as for me, this would be well appreciated...

OK, posted :)

[carphead]

Just thought I'd update you guys on my OnSpeed experiance..

It turned out to be a right pain in the rear end. I use my X50v about 60% for browsing, checking email and about 5-10% for GPRS doing the same.

When I turned on Wi-Fi there would be a 30 second delay whilst the Onspeed software connected to the OnSpeed proxy system. So after turning on Wifi and then connection I would get a 40 to 50 second delay including picking up a DHCP address.

Using GPRS would be about the same. I just got feed up with the delay. I WAS seeing the savings on the GPRS bandwidth but sometimes money saving is not the important issue.

On ISDN Dial up from using a PC the connection was no where near ADSL speed. More like 128K ISDN :(. Somethings were snapper but not much.

I've unloaded the software and taken advantage of 14 day money back. :)

Back to TooNel for me :)

[Menneisyys]

Just thought I'd update you guys on my OnSpeed experiance..

It turned out to be a right pain in the rear end. I use my X50v about 60% for browsing, checking email and about 5-10% for GPRS doing the same.

When I turned on Wi-Fi there would be a 30 second delay whilst the Onspeed software connected to the OnSpeed proxy system. So after turning on Wifi and then connection I would get a 40 to 50 second delay including picking up a DHCP address.

Using GPRS would be about the same. I just got feed up with the delay. I WAS seeing the savings on the GPRS bandwidth but sometimes money saving is not the important issue.

On ISDN Dial up from using a PC the connection was no where near ADSL speed. More like 128K ISDN :(. Somethings were snapper but not much.

I've unloaded the software and taken advantage of 14 day money back. :)

Back to TooNel for me :)

Thanks for the update. I will test OnSpeed too when possible.

The other "native" Pocket PC solution, Globility, doesn't have any kind of delay. (Neither do Toonel, but that's not a native PPC app.). Therefore, this is clearly a bug in OnSpeed.

[carphead]

No probs.

The desktop client had the same delay in it. BUT whilst it was find the Onspeed servers it would still pass data until it made the connection so wasn't that noticeable.

But the Pocket PC client blocked all data until connection was made which made the whole use down right annoying.