Download Accelerators

[Illustrious 0]

I was wondering if download accelerators/download managers really help increase the speed of your downloads. For example, I heard that "Download Accelerator Plus (DAP)" by SpeedBit and Gigaget helped increase people's download speeds but how exactly do these programs work and how efficient are they? Do they have a chance of corrupting the file that you are downloading?

[Quatrux 4]

Whenever I tried those download accelerators, they seemed to increase the speed as they use multi connections to the same content downloading and stick it together. I never got any problems with files being corrupted, but those download managers use a lot of your hard disk drive RPMs and your system gets a bit slow.. Also it depends from your connection and the site from which you're downloading, as some sites from which you can download files only allows one connection from an IP address..I don't use them anymore, as I have a quite good connection and I am patient to wait for download to finish and whenever I need to download a big file, usually it is offered in a torrent and it already is a good alternative to download it quite fast using multiple connections from people who share the torrent and it won't be corrupted..I guess, files can get corrupted much easier when you use download managers/accelerators when you get an OS error or your computers reboots due to electricity was gone for several seconds, but it all depends on the algorithms and etc.I don't see any profit of waiting 5 minutes for the download to finish or 9 minutes without any accelerators, at least the system works faster as usually big hard disk activity can make your system work slower even when CPU usage is only 7%, it depends on your hard drive RPM.

[infotornix 0]

i use idm internet download manager, its a really good one it down load the files into pices so automatically increases the download speed .well i like this idm i am using it for 2 years it is really awesome to use.just download the 30 day trail and i bet you will use it for ever.

[Techn9kotine 0]

Download accelerators don't actually speed up the downloads. See, most sites have a bandwidth limit per user. Meaning you download at the speed they allow you to. Download accelerators will break the files down into pieces, and access the site as not one, but many users, downloading each piece of the file simultaneously, each capping at it's user bandwidth, so the host believes it is just multiple users downloading the same file and allows it. And this of course means getting your download even faster.They also offer features like resuming interrupted downloads. Nobody like waiting hours, or even days for a file, to find out your computer shut down during the process and you must now restart.I've personally never used any, but from my research they seem to be quite useful tools to those who download many, or large files. For smaller files,t or not so frequent downloading I have to agree with Quatrux, it may be better to be patient and just wait it out.

[infotornix 0]

Well my internet sped is onoly 17kbps and if i need to down load 1gb file i need to take are of it for 25 hour .well so i need the download manager for it (if resume needed.)

[wutske 0]

Okay, just a bit of internet theory:Let us assume you're host A and the server you're downloading from is host B. B is in a datacenter and has a nice fiber-optic connection with a maximum throuhgput of 1Gbps. You on the other hand are limited to 10Mbps since you're using a simple ADSL over copper connection.1) Host B doesn't restrict your speed: you'll be able to use you're complete (available) throuhgput of 10Mbps and there's no way of getting it any faster, Download Accelerators won't help in this case.2) Host B limits the bandwith per user (let's say: 1Mbps): in this case, a download accelerator which creates 10 connections will help you to use your maximum bandwith.3) Host B limits the bandwith per IP (let's say: 1Mbps and this is how many file hosters do it nowadays): in this case, you can try to create as many connections as you want, you won't get over that speed limit of 1Mbps.4) Other situation: host B is reaching it's capacity and there's only 1Mbps left for you (setting up more connections is more or less impossible): in this case it might be handy to use a download accelerator IF you know a mirror site which you can use to setup multiple connections. However, be aware that it's not that easy to find mirrors (except for large, opensource stuff like linux distributions for which there's probably also a P2P download available).So, in short: there's only one case (1) where it's fruitfull to use a download accelerator to speed up things, in 2 cases (1 and 3) it's completely useless and in one case (3) it might be usefull if you have extra mirrors (btw, if you have a good mirror, you might as well download it directly from the mirror which will put you right back into case 1).For the handy stuff like pauzing downloads (which must be supported by the server, a limitation which is also required for speeding up the download by setting up multiple connections) you're better off with an application which was designed for doing just that, they have a smaller footprint, are more easy to use and there're are probably more free alternatives because afaik, DAP is full of crappy ads).Just my 2c about my experiences with download accelerators (which I don't use anymore because they suck).

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Okay, just a bit of internet theory:
Let us assume you're host A and the server you're downloading from is host B. B is in a datacenter and has a nice fiber-optic connection with a maximum throuhgput of 1Gbps. You on the other hand are limited to 10Mbps since you're using a simple ADSL over copper connection.
1) Host B doesn't restrict your speed: you'll be able to use you're complete (available) throuhgput of 10Mbps and there's no way of getting it any faster, Download Accelerators won't help in this case.

2) Host B limits the bandwith per user (let's say: 1Mbps): in this case, a download accelerator which creates 10 connections will help you to use your maximum bandwith.

3) Host B limits the bandwith per IP (let's say: 1Mbps and this is how many file hosters do it nowadays): in this case, you can try to create as many connections as you want, you won't get over that speed limit of 1Mbps.

4) Other situation: host B is reaching it's capacity and there's only 1Mbps left for you (setting up more connections is more or less impossible): in this case it might be handy to use a download accelerator IF you know a mirror site which you can use to setup multiple connections. However, be aware that it's not that easy to find mirrors (except for large, opensource stuff like linux distributions for which there's probably also a P2P download available).

So, in short: there's only one case (1) where it's fruitfull to use a download accelerator to speed up things, in 2 cases (1 and 3) it's completely useless and in one case (3) it might be usefull if you have extra mirrors (btw, if you have a good mirror, you might as well download it directly from the mirror which will put you right back into case 1).

For the handy stuff like pauzing downloads (which must be supported by the server, a limitation which is also required for speeding up the download by setting up multiple connections) you're better off with an application which was designed for doing just that, they have a smaller footprint, are more easy to use and there're are probably more free alternatives because afaik, DAP is full of crappy ads).

Just my 2c about my experiences with download accelerators (which I don't use anymore because they suck).

Well that is really nice knowledge. I have no idea of how things happen on the internet. I thought that it completely depends upon the internet speed of the user. If the internet speed of a user is greater, the download speed would be high. Commonly it happens the same way but sometimes with same internet speed, the download speed of one file is greater than the download speed of other. This can be explained by the theory proposed by the cat

[wutske 0]

In fact, there are a few more causes for slow downloads. To begin with, you neve know where the file comes from, but it's obvious that downloading a file from a server 100km away is going to be way faster than when it comes from the other side of the world.You have to realise that between you and a server, there are many different devices (switches, backbones, other servers, ...) which allow you to connect to all the servers. These devices do have their limitations and mainly a limited bandwith will slow you down (if the device can transfer 1Gbps and 1000 users are downloading through this device, any use will get only 1Mbps).Now, the further away a file is, the more devices it has to pass and the more risk there is that a device is limiting your connection speed (the weakest link in the chain). Another limitation is more local, since nowadays, this the worst part of the connection: old coper cable. It's not a problem to transfer large amounts of data over a coper cable (a high quality twister pair cable can transfer a few Gbps, but only over 10-100meter. Over 4km, this speed drops because the signal weakens a lot due to the resistance and impedance of the coper cable. These are all limitations which are impossible to overcome with a simple software solution, the only way to get things faster is by hardware replacements. It's sad that companies are promising things which are impossible. They should clearely state that download accelerators only work when the connection speed is limited softwarematically (thus software vs software).