Web accelerator

A web accelerator is a proxy server that reduces web site access times. Web accelerators may use several techniques to achieve this reduction:

• They may cache recently or frequently accessed documents so they may be sent to the client with less latency or at a faster transfer rate than the remote server could.
• They may prefetch documents that are likely to be accessed in the near future.
• They may compress documents to a smaller size, for example by reducing the quality of images or by sending only what's changed since the document was last requested.
• They may filter out unnecessary documents so they are not sent to the client at all.

These applications generally serve to improve dial-up speeds though Google's application is specifically designed for improving broadband access to the sites. Moreover they are limited to websites only and cannot improve speeds of downloads or streaming or any other internet applications.

References

• "CRPUD Web Accelerator". CRPUD Internet Service. April 16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
• "Opera Mobile Accelerator". Opera for Mobile. April 16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
• Google Web Accelerator and FAQ