Ashfame | Tech Blog » Tech Myths

Download Manager myth

Ashfame — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:31:03 +0000

Download Managers or Download Accelerator claims to download your file up to 350% faster or even more. Do they really work? Always? How do they work? This post is for busting the myth that download managers always help to improve your speed and you won’t get full speed if you don’t use it.

This thing needs a big clarification here. Download managers or accelerators do help but not always. The biggest advantage you get by using a download manager depends on the connecting server and your broadband speed itself. I will try to explain with an example.

Like, If a server can provide a file for downloading at the speed of 256 Kbps (32 KBps), and the user’s broadband speed is only 128 Kbps, then the download limit will be limited by the user’s bandwidth here. No download manager can help increase your speed here.

The only scenario where they can be of real help is where the user can support a higher speed transfer as compared to what the server offer to a single client. They then connect with the server as multiple clients and download the respective parts of file.

For example: Consider a scenario in which the user has a download speed of 512 Kbps (64KBps) and the server offer only a speed of 128 Kbps (16 KBps).

If the user is not using any download manager then the file will be downloaded only at the speed of 16KBps will not be able to download the file and the speed will be capped. This is where the download managers ( and accelerators) come into play. They connect as multiple clients and let the user download at the maximum speed of their connection. The server will treat them as 4 clients are downloading the file.

I hope you are now clear with what download managers can actually help. They are a good piece of code as they help in resuming interrupted download sessions but they are now already built in browsers like Firefox, Opera etc.

What’s your broadband speed? I work on 256 Kbps and don’t use any download manager. Do you use any?

Internet Speed myth

Ashfame — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:01:45 +0000

I am writing about another myth after a long time. I get the urge of killing a myth when I really get inspired to so in my offline world. This myth buster is inspired by another one which will follow up.

This post is for the people who tends to get in the catch of Internet providers who offers them insane speed but they don’t get the offered speed, not because the providers are cheating on the users but because of the fact that they exploit a technical aspect here.

It happened with my friend in way back 2006, when he get himself an internet connection of 256 Kbps and calculated that he would be able to download a 1 MB file in just 4 seconds as 1 MB = 1024 KB & 1024 KB / 256 Kbps = 4 seconds but we all know that it certainly takes more time.

However, this is incorrect. There is a difference between Kbps and KBps.

1Kbps is 1 Kilobits per sec whereas 1KBps is 1 Kilobytes per sec

1 Byte = 8 Bits

So 1 KBps is 8 times faster than 1 Kbps

And by convention we use bps to represent network transfer speed so Internet providers use this to market their internet speed. When they say they 256 Kbps, they mean Kbps and not KBps. I have seen providers marketing their speed as KBps too but that’s just a fault of their part or a marketing gimmick.

So doing our maths again,

256 Kbps = 32 KBps (256/8=32)

1MB = 1024 KB

1024 KB / 32 KBps = 32 seconds

I hope I made the point clear. Have you seen people miscalculating this too? Leave your response in the comments.

Hibernation – Enabling and Benefits [Explained]

Ashfame — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:05:15 +0000

What is the most obvious thing that even a noob can do on a computer? Well, Shutdown & Restart can be called as the answer other than powering ON. Keeping the noobs aside, have you ever used Standby feature? Many of your might give affirmative replies but do you know there is another state in which you can keep your computer so as to resume from where you left it. This state of condition is called Hibernation which is different from standby state.

Hibernation differs from Standby in many aspects. In standby, computer keeps on running at a low power consumption mode so that you can quickly resume from where you left it. Hibernation is not that fast but it allows your computer to turn off. This means that you can resume from the point of task from where you hibernate it.

Enable Hibernation on Windows

Before trying Hibernation, you need to enable it.

To enable it, go to Control Panel > Power Options.

Select the Hibernate tab and click OK.

How to Hibernate
Once hibernation is enabled, you can hibernate your computer at the Turn Off screen only.

After holding down Shift button the Stand By icon will change to Hibernate icon as shown below.

What happens when you hibernate?

To make it clear in the first explaination, let us start from basics. We all know RAM is volatile i.e. it holds content till it is in power ON state and contents goes off as it is switched OFF. Whatever is to be executed, must be loaded into the main memory (RAM). When you hibernate, contents of RAM are as it is copied to the hard disk. Now you know why it was asking for space while enabling hibernation. The space required depends on how much RAM you have installed on your computer. Now when you power ON your system next time, those contents are written back to RAM from hard disk and you get the same working space left by you.

Benefits of hibernation

You get to resume from where you left even when you have switched off the power supply.
If your computer are one of those which take ages to boot up, then this is going to decrease your boot up time (in the sense that you have to wait less as compared to booting the OS).
All your web2.0 applications that are loaded in your browser remains as it is. For example: Gmail, Online photo editing tools etc (No need of reloading). This is a great benefit for dialup users who can’t afford to loose time while waiting for such heavy applications to load again.

Have you ever hibernate your computer? What was your experience? Have your say in the comments.

Myth about Right Click > Refresh

Ashfame — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:15:13 +0000

I have seen ~~many~~ all computer users around me doing tons of refreshes thinking that they are speeding up the process. Time to throw some light on it.

What you do?

You clicked on something which is taking a while to load and there you start refreshing it.

What you think?

It is going to speed up the process as you are telling it to do it quickly. Isn’t it?

Point to think about

If the process was to be made fast, then why one would bottleneck the speed. Even if it was and you want a faster processing then why is there no automated option of refreshing it.

What’s the point?

What it actually do is that it sends a instruction of re-drawing the complete display on the screen. That means while your computer is busy with something you are just giving it something else do with something that is already going on. Instead of making things fast, you are delaying the processing as now it also needs to re-draw the whole display.

Why was refresh made then?

It was made to re-draw the display. You made some changes. Although the changes are made but they are not reflected immediately on the display. By refreshing, you are just telling the computer to refresh the display. Thats it.

It can’t get better than this. Still you have any query, feel free to ask in the comments. Are you also in a habit of doing tons of refreshes? Say it in the comments.

Myth about Download Managers

Ashfame — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:43:54 +0000

Every download manager claims to increase the download speed multiple times. Surely they are of great help and can’t think of myself without one. But this post targets the users which are from countries like India where high speed internet is still yet to see all over the country.

Without Download Manager

The browser asks for the file from the server.
A connection is established between the client and the server.
File transfer starts but the speed is limited by the server to reserve the bandwidth for other users.

With Download Manager

The browser asks for the file from the server.
Multiple connections are established between the client and the server.
File transfer starts and the speed is as many times as the number of connections are established.

Here comes a myth. Many users (novice) assume that it increases the download speed but they are not aware of the fact that maximum speed is limited by their connection speed. Users with slow connections usually don’t get much improvements because the bandwidth supported by many servers for a single connection is greater or equivalent than the one with slow connections. For Eg: A server supports 128Kbs bandwidth for a single connection so a user with 128Kbps connection will not see any improvement in download speed. If the user downloads a file without using download manager then he will be able to achieve the 128 Kbps speed. For users with slow connection, download manager speeds only serve the feature of resuming broken downloads. They are of no use for increasing the download speed for such users.

A refined version of this post – Download Manager myth.