Re:How to speed up ppp download with apt / aptitude ?

[Siward <siward.via@freeler.nl>]

 Hi Michael,

you wrote : 
> When i download via aptitude on textconsole, the progress bar shows around
> (take a deep breathe) 5300B/s.
[snip]
> I want to add that pppstatus sometimes shows up to 12 KB/s when browsing
>   http.

 you also wrote that you are on a dialup line.

 A dialup line to an ISP is a normal telephone line,
   a telephone line can transport a maximum of 4kHz x 8 bits = kB/s
 It is impossible to transport more.

 Reason that pppstatus shows a higher speed is that
   pppstatus show speed over serial line,
   and when a file is selected for download that is not yet compressed,
   then it will be compressed at ISP and decompressed by modem,
   so in that case modem still receives less than 4kB/s
   but it uncompresses 4kB to 12kB
     (factor 3 is a typical compression rate fro gzip eg.)
 If you download debian packages,
   then ofcourse they are already compressed.

 If you want to do something different when downloading,
   you can simply background apt (or whatever)
   by putting " &" at end of command you type.
 you wont get progress reports anymore ofcourse
    unless you bring process back in foreground with
	'jobs' (to see which jobnumber it has) and
	'fg <jobnumber>'

 good luck,

 Siward