Dr. Mac's OS X Tip-of-the-Day  

Got Broadband? Got Broadband Optimizer? Does Broadband Optimizer actually improve your broadband throughput ?

I visit VersionTracker's OS X new program listings page every day, usually more than once. I'm always on the prowl for cool new utilities (and games). So when I saw one called "Broadband Optimizer" late last year my eyes lit up. Being a broadband user myself (RoadRunner cable modem - and it rocks!), if it makes my already-rocket-fast connection faster, I wanted it. But first, I needed to see for myself if it worked.

So I conducted a pseudo-scientific experiment. I ran two bandwidth measurement tests (CNET and Bandwidth Place) 5 times each with BBO installed, and 5 times without. I was careful to flush IE's cache manually after each run and I set the cache size to 0 and quit the browser between runs for good measure. Of course, I rebooted each time I enabled/disabled Broadband Optimizer.

The bottom line was:

Overall test score was 91% faster with Broadband Optimizer according to CNET. http://webservices.cnet.com/Bandwidth/

Raw bps test score was 57% faster with Broadband Optimizer according to Bandwidth Place. http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

Even if it's only half of that I'm sold. I've been running it since late last year and so far it's been sweet. I've seen discussion of it on some of the email lists and forum boards I read, and it seems to me that cable users are more likely to see benefit than DSL users. But you have to try it as some DSL users report substantial improvement (and some claim it makes throughput slower...).

Download Broadband Optimizer: http://www.enigmarelle.com/sw/download/BroadbandOptimizer.dmg.gz

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Bob LeVitus is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 37 books, including Mac OS X For Dummies and The Little iTunes Book