Blast transfer
 Normal transfer

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Blast transfer

The blast transfer feature helps to maximize the speed and reliability of your anonymous Internet connection, at the same time. When the blast transfer feature is enabled, GhostSurf sends your browser's requests to multiple anonymous hubs at the same time. The first hub that responds is used by GhostSurf to fulfill that request; the rest are dropped.

If some of the hubs you have chosen are slow or even broken, blast transfer will automatically avoid them. Blast transfer ensures that you get the anonymous information you want as quickly and reliably as possible.

The downside is that GhostSurf and your Internet connection have to work harder in sending out requests; rather than sending out each request once, GhostSurf has to send out each request once for each anonymous hub you've chosen (within the limits you've prescribed). You can choose the balance between peak speed and reliability (using more anonymous hubs at once) and connection load (using fewer hubs at once) in the Options pane shown above. Choosing smaller numbers for the "transfer using X anonymous hubs simultaneously" reduces the load on your Internet connection, but increases the chances that you'll be stuck with a slow anonymous hub or even a broken one. Increasing this number increases the amount of work that has to be done when a request is sent, but also improves your chances of getting the requested page or image back quickly. We recommend between 2 and 5 hubs for this setting.

The Options pane shows you how many anonymous hubs you've currently selected. You can select more than one anonymous hub in the anonymous hubs window. If you choose more hubs than you're using at once, GhostSurf will select a subset of the hubs you've chosen for each request. On the other hand, if you've chosen fewer hubs than you wish to use at once, GhostSurf will use all the hubs you've chosen but no additional ones. It's important, then, to choose at least as many hubs as you'd like to use at once, and that they are the faster hubs.

For more information on the blast transfer feature, please read the blast transfer article.

Normal transfer

When blast transfer is off, you can still use multiple hubs to get your information. This will not improve the speed of your anonymous connection or its reliability, but will further confuse your ISP or a website that's trying to track users--since your requests will come from different anonymous hubs around the world, it will look like many people are visiting a particular website (rather than just you). This doesn't really improve your anonymity (even if they see which pages you access, they still don't know who you are) but, for those who are particularly concerned about secrecy, will provide an incremental level of obfuscation. You can choose to have GhostSurf switch between the hubs you've selected by enabling the "Alternate anonymous hubs..." option, and choosing either "switch every request" or "switch every site."