Software vendors accelerate dial-up remote access

Vendors Shiva Corp. and Traveling Software, Inc. last week separately announced technology that can speed the transfer of data over dial-up links without investing in new remote access hardware.

The Shiva offering, called PowerSurf, is directed at speeding up traffic downloading over the Internet by making the transfer more efficient. Currently in alpha testing, Shiva said PowerSurf can improve performance of a dial-up line from 20% to more than 200%, depending on how slow the link was initially. It runs on a Shiva LanRover Access Switch, and current customers can upgrade to...