There are a couple of ways your Internet connection speed can be improved, depending on your usage pattern.
For example, you may have noticed that Internet browsing is very slow when you are seeding some torrents. When you are seeding a torrent, you are uploading, so why would it affect your browsing speed (which is largely downstream in terms of traffic volume)? The answer lies in the way TCP/IP works. Yes, when you browse websites, you are largely downloading, but your computer also needs to send acknowledge (ACK) packets to let the web servers know that you have indeed received data, otherwise the web server won't continue to send you new data. The ACK packets are very small, but they still need to be sent, which means it needs to use a little of your upstream bandwidth. Now, when you are seeding a torrent, the BitTorrent packets outnumber the ACK packets for your web browsing. Without proper packet prioritisation and scheduling, whichever generates the most packets basically gets to hog the upstream bandwidth.
This is where some of these speed improvement programs can be legitimately useful. Some of them come as a form of custom ADSL driver. A smart ADSL driver can be configured to prioritise certain web browsing packets over P2P packets, so that your web browsing speed is largely unaffected when you are seeding torrents. In other words, it's a software implementation of Quality-of-Service. I remember having bought one that worked about 10 years ago, from a German software company. I can't remember the name though.
@smc: a few examples would be a search on google,like this " Internet speed boosters",then,a world of products just show up.By the way,i have another question,there is an answer which name is "Internet Download Manager " this program kinda improve your download speed and also when it stats downloading a file,it first rip the files apart and downloads each piece of file separately.How does this technique increase the download speed?Thanks. – user3722727 – 2014-06-19T20:25:43.713
@user3722727 : Download managers are actually useful. Here is a short (and probably not full) list of functionality they provide: -Resuming interrupted downloads; -Downloading in multiple sessions, where server restricts speed per session; -Queuing downloads where server restricts maximum session count; -Automatic capture recognition (this does not always work); -Downloading all files of the same type linked on the page with one click; - Downloading all pictures from the webpage with one click. I guess there is more to be added to the list. – Art Gertner – 2014-06-20T08:45:19.487
@user3722727 : About downloading in segments. Sometimes server restricts the download speed per session, but does not track how many sessions are open per one IP. This allows download manager to start downloading file in chunks with multiple sessions open. This can boost download speed x2, x4, sometimes x8 times, provided your broadband total speed is not the limiting factor. – Art Gertner – 2014-06-20T08:47:12.583
1What products are you talking about? Link them. – DBedrenko – 2014-06-18T13:06:00.887
3Agreed, few examples would help to improve the quality of the question and the entire discussion – Art Gertner – 2014-06-18T13:24:31.803
1@smc you mean that a few examples would help ;-) – LSerni – 2014-06-18T13:53:54.740
2I think this question would be cooler if it were titled, "Is speed enhancement software the new 'download more RAM'?" – jpmc26 – 2014-06-18T16:01:03.273