What this free utility does is send intermittent queries to various web sites, simulating activity at specified intervals, and fooling your ISP into thinking you are still awake. There may be a way to improve things somewhat. They use the same premise, that the default settings for Windows are for a LAN or network environment, and by optimizing Windows for dial up you can increase it's efficiency. I tried both, and didn't notice huge improvements. A large file that I was trying to download from Hotmail was coming at around 3.0 kbps, after using the product, and under almost identical conditions, it was coming at slightly over 4.0 kbps.
Fax machines make noise on the line that can cause problems.
If you really want a free, painless way to download large files, you've got to get a download manager. In one scenario, I had a 21 Meg image file that I had to get off the Internet. Of course this meant starting over from scratch and using up more of my precious dial up connection time. Finally I found a little utility called Net Vampire . I can't praise this program enough.