Kill 2 Birds With 1 Stone

[mac.wheeler]

I have wondered for quite some time now why many people report certain websites as being blocked from Thailand and I never seem to have the same problem.

I finally realised why today and it's quite a cool little bonus feature of a piece of software I use.

I am subscribed to a web acceleration service at www.propel.com it costs about $50 a year and it works really well. And today I realised it is also giving me a nice proxy connection and neatly stepping around the blocked website problems encountered whilst using an ISP within Thailand.

Does anyone else use Propel? I've used it for over a year now and it's performed fantastically.

[sniffdog]

I use ONSpeed ..... you can get the program and a username/password for free if you search well enough ...

It's off most of the time though, as their servers are not faster than a direct connection through TOT.

[Dissolution]

What's the website for Propel?

And is it any faster than a vanilla connection?

[mac.wheeler]

What's the website for Propel?

And is it any faster than a vanilla connection?

The website is www.propel.com, for web surfing and downloading email it is around 5 times faster over my CDMA or EDGE connection. Obviously the faster connection you have the less benefit you will see.

What it does is load the web pages through it's own server and send them to you, it will compress all of the graphics, text. flash etc before it sends them to you so you have to download a lot less.

I just checked the performance graph on my laptop and it tells me my connection without propel would have averaged 11kbps but with propel has averaged the same as a 169kbps connection. My last 30 days of browsing and email would have seen me download 588MB but propel cut that down to 96MB which is an 84% saving. Expressed in time it would have taken me 182.9 hours over my normal connect, instead it took 30 hours.

It will only speed up surfing and email though, things liek torrents, ftp downloads etc will not see any benefit. I really do recommend it to anyone suffering from a slow connection such as dialup or GPRS, there is even a free trial.

Edited January 11, 2008 by mac.wheeler

[yeti]

And today I realised it is also giving me a nice proxy connection and neatly stepping around the blocked website problems encountered whilst using an ISP within Thailand.

You know that using such a service in Thailand is illegal, right?

[mac.wheeler]

And today I realised it is also giving me a nice proxy connection and neatly stepping around the blocked website problems encountered whilst using an ISP within Thailand.

You know that using such a service in Thailand is illegal, right?

Using a web accelerator is illegal in Thailand?

[yeti]

No, but using a proxy connection is.

[mac.wheeler]

No, but using a proxy connection is.

Then surely the powers that be who spend vast amounts of resources to constantly monitor the internet for anything naughty should block www.propel.com, I very much doubt the average user of this service would even know what a proxy connection is. As the Thai government feels they know best what we should and shouldn't be accessing then I propose that it is up to them to extend their protection of the innocent and ensure that unwitting customers do not subscribe to a service that would be breaking Thai law

[Crossy]

No, but using a proxy connection is.

Then surely the powers that be who spend vast amounts of resources to constantly monitor the internet for anything naughty should block www.propel.com, I very much doubt the average user of this service would even know what a proxy connection is. As the Thai government feels they know best what we should and shouldn't be accessing then I propose that it is up to them to extend their protection of the innocent and ensure that unwitting customers do not subscribe to a service that would be breaking Thai law

Careful, the powers that be read this site.

Actually, I don't think using a proxy is illegal, only using a proxy to bypass the government block.

Not sure how they intend enforcing that, I note that many of the proxy reference sites are blocked though.

Edited January 11, 2008 by Crossy

[Guest Reimar]

Using a Proxy for anonymous surfing and for to bypass plocked Websites is illegal. But if the service you paying for is traceable back to you and not anonym than you can use them!

But anyway, discussion of proxys isn't allowed on this forum.

[mac.wheeler]

Using a Proxy for anonymous surfing and for to bypass plocked Websites is illegal. But if the service you paying for is traceable back to you and not anonym than you can use them!

But anyway, discussion of proxys isn't allowed on this forum.

Traceable in what way? For sure it's traceable back to me via the financial transaction and I see no mention in their FAQ about not supplying log data to the relevent authorities, my guess is I don't have a problem.

[marcus]

Using a Proxy for anonymous surfing and for to bypass plocked Websites is illegal. But if the service you paying for is traceable back to you and not anonym than you can use them!

But anyway, discussion of proxys isn't allowed on this forum.

I became curious and I'm testing the service now. "schowmyip.com" says "Your currently assigned host name is adsl-pool-124.157.222-241.tttmaxnet.com", so if it is a proxy, it's not a very anonymous one ;-)

About the quality of their service : I already canceled it. Most of the time, the program will be disabled because my "connection is too fast". A too fast connection in Thailand ???? Am I dreaming ????

Right now, it's finally running, but the results are not worth paying for.

[Guest Reimar]

Using a Proxy for anonymous surfing and for to bypass plocked Websites is illegal. But if the service you paying for is traceable back to you and not anonym than you can use them!

But anyway, discussion of proxys isn't allowed on this forum.

I became curious and I'm testing the service now. "schowmyip.com" says "Your currently assigned host name is adsl-pool-124.157.222-241.tttmaxnet.com", so if it is a proxy, it's not a very anonymous one ;-)

About the quality of their service : I already canceled it. Most of the time, the program will be disabled because my "connection is too fast". A too fast connection in Thailand ???? Am I dreaming ????

Right now, it's finally running, but the results are not worth paying for.

If you can trace your IP back to your ISP than it isn't anonym at all! So, don't worry there is nothing illegal. But the connection "adsl-pool-124.157.222-241.tttmaxnet.com" seems to be running over an internal Proxy at Maxnet because you get the whole ADSL Pool Addresses!

But the error "the connection is to fast" that's realy curious!

The error came from a connection to where?

[marcus]

But the error "the connection is to fast" that's realy curious!

The error came from a connection to where?

Well, I found out after installing the program. On their homepage they let you believe that it will dramatically increase your speed, but if you look a bit further you will find in their knowledge base the following :

"Propel Accelerator works with connections operating at speeds up to 1Mbps (megabits per second). In addition to dial-up connections, some wireless ISDN or DSL connections qualify. If you have not downloaded Propel Accelerator and you are not sure what your Internet connection speed is click here. If you have installed Propel Accelerator, you can check your speed by using Propel Accelerator diagnostics available from the Propel Accelerator taskbar menu."

In other words it will only work with very slow connections. At start up, I had to run some diagnostic tool, and it said my speed was 1.3 Mbps, so the whole thing didn't even start up.

[mac.wheeler]

Using a Proxy for anonymous surfing and for to bypass plocked Websites is illegal. But if the service you paying for is traceable back to you and not anonym than you can use them!

But anyway, discussion of proxys isn't allowed on this forum.

I became curious and I'm testing the service now. "schowmyip.com" says "Your currently assigned host name is adsl-pool-124.157.222-241.tttmaxnet.com", so if it is a proxy, it's not a very anonymous one ;-)

About the quality of their service : I already canceled it. Most of the time, the program will be disabled because my "connection is too fast". A too fast connection in Thailand ???? Am I dreaming ????

Right now, it's finally running, but the results are not worth paying for.

As I said originally, it's great for dialup or GPRS but the faster your connection is the less benefit you will get. I can't see the point of running it at all if you have any sort of broadband.

Edited January 11, 2008 by mac.wheeler