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Internet acceleration has little to do with the speed at which data moves down your telephone line. That is dictated by your hardware and how many kilobits per second it isimmediately set to work discovering fault capable of pumping through. Most Internet accelerators behave as proxy servers, a sort of software middleman between your browser and the Net. In other words, a software accelerator is an active agent that intercepts and anticipates your requests for pages and smartly manages when and from where the page is downloaded.
While adding extra steps to a download may seem illogical, it helps to picture it like this; a benevolent neighbour overhears you ordering a delivery pizza, has one in the oven he's been saving just for this occasion and cheerfully tosses it over the fence. And when he gets really pro-active, he's out shopping for things he thinks you might like later and storing them up. This is called read-ahead caching and is foremost amongst techniques used to make the whole Net experience happen faster.
The current crop of accelerators work mostly by employing read-ahead page caching. Instead of having to retrieve a page from the often-distant server, your browser gets it straight off your hard drive where it's been previously stashed. Read-ahead page caching can be divided into two categories; link based and history based.
Link-based accelerator can graze indiscriminately through the Net, downloading pages you may never look at. While you've been reading the current page, all the links on it can be sniffed out and downloaded in the background. This equals instant display when you click on a link, assuming you've loitered long enough for the background downloading to take place. Nothing has actually run faster but your future requests have been anticipated and pre-emptively fulfilled, thus the page load time appears faster when you click a link. This sort of operation can keep a modem running flat out with continual page requests. If everyone used one, the already congested Net would hit gridlock pronto. For this reason, such programs are not recommended for those paying for their data traffic by the megabyte.
History-based acceleration works more conservatively, by downloading only pages you have previously visited or specified. This is like a supercharged version of the usual Navigator or IE history cache, with an automatic update scheduler and cache management tool thrown in. You won't see any speed increases for random surfing, but pre-visited sites load rapidly. Creatures of habit will benefit most from this sort of acceleration.
The Internet addressing protocol (IP) is numerical, so every time you type in a textual URL, it has to be converted to its numerical equivalent. This is done by sending a request to a DNS (dynamic name server), usually a machine run by your ISP. It matches up the URL and returns the numerical address from its database to your machine, which all takes time. The DNS at your service provider can't possibly hold every URL's IP address, so it's linked to a global network of DNSes. Thus the lookup can take even longer. DNS caching stores the numerical IP address for your most frequently-used URLs locally, in what is called a hosts file, thus saving a call to a server.
MaxMTU, RWIN, TTL, STL, socketnum and maxsocket. Ha! If that doesn't mean a lot to you, don't worry. They're among esoteric registry settings for both software and hardware concerning dial-up networking (DUN) and the default values can be changed with a resulting speed boost. Fooling around in the registry is a dangerous game that is not recommended at all, even for the experienced. That's why there's programs that aim to do it safely and automatically. It's also known as modem optimisation.
Blocking being the fine art of screening out pop-ups, ads, banners, cookies, animations, graphics and even background music. It makes the Net a duller place, but it sure speeds up page loading. The simplest form of blocking is already available within your browser by turning off the graphics under Edit/Internet Options or Edit/Preferences. If you're just browsing for information, using text only is a good option, especially on a slower connection.
The speed gain from read-ahead caching is undeniable. The ethics of using such bandwidth-hungry software is questionable, though the arrival of high-speed digital lines will probably render this a moot point. The true speed fiend will relish the gains while the occasional user may not get so much out of it.
History based acceleration works for pre-visited sites but is useless for random surfing It is though, a lot more Internet friendly. DNS caching, tweaking and blocking can all contribute to faster surfing, though tweaking is the only technique to speed up all Net services, the rest only work for http content.