I'm trying a new program called Traffic compressor which really seems to speed up my net access.
It is currently beta only, but it is behaving without problems for me.
It seems to speed things up considerably; more than is indicated by the statistics it provides.
It is worth a try, and may be better still for dial-up users (I have ADSL).
It is available at http://www.tcompressor.com/

Be aware that upon installation it checks for any already installed programs you may have that are incompatible, but these are few in number.