FastTCP™ Internet Acceleration Technology
FastSoft’s Internet acceleration products are based on FastSoft’s patent-pending FastTCP technology, which dramatically increases the speed of data transmission over the Internet, even across very large distances.
Technology Benefits
- Exceptionally resilient to packet loss and latency
- Transparent to applications and network management systems
- No software installation or kernel modifications required
- Fairly shares bandwidth with other WAN traffic
- Transparent to firewalls
- Does not use compression or caching
- Improves performance for both broadcast and point-to-point
- Reduces network latency with AutoQoS feature
FastTCP was used to break the world record for the fastest sustained data transfer rates at the Supercomputing Network Bandwidth Challenge four times, reaching a sustained throughput level of 101 gigabits per second. This phenomenal rate is the equivalent to transmitting the entire contents of the Library of Congress in 15 minutes.
How FastTCP Works
Today more than 90% of traffic on the Internet uses TCP. While TCP provides congestion control and loss recovery, it is designed to slow down whenever packet loss is detected. Standard TCP sends data at a rate that increases slowly, but then cuts the throughput in half once a packet loss is detected. This can be seen as a sawtooth pattern when plotted on the graph below.
A 30% reduction in throughput on a 10 Mbps DSL line can mean the difference between an HD movie experience and a Standard Definition one. A 50% slowdown on a high capacity line, such as an OC-3, means the transmission capacity reduces from 155Mbps to 77.5 Mbps.
FastSoft’s founders discovered that they could maintain high throughput by avoiding the conditions introduced when standard TCP reacts to packet loss. FastTCP enables a constant number of packets in queues throughout the network, resulting in smoother data flows with fewer retries. The chart above shows that FastTCP achieves a 95% throughput utilization compared to only 19% using standard TCP. This translates into high productivity gains across the organization.
Learn more by reading the FastTCP and Benchmark white papers.