I’m not familiar with the technologies that you mentioned, but in general, routing is layer 3 and transport (e.g. TCP) is layer 4 (at least conceptually; I know there are exceptions in implementation etc), so they complement each other, in that one attempts to choose the best path from point A to point B and one attempts to make the most effective use of the chosen path.

The most remarkable ingenuity of the Internet pioneers, and one that is singularly responsible for the explosive growth of the Internet, is to have gotten the layering architecture right, of which the above is an example. Each layer provides a few functions well (media access, routing, congestion control & loss recovery, applications, etc) and each can evolve independently, unlocking innovations across almost all IT landscape and beyond. The very fact that multiple companies and industries are able to cooperate/co-exist/compete to build/operate/serve from/monetize on the same network infrastructure is an astounding testament of the architectural success of these pioneers, unimaginable before the Internet era. Can’t help but digress in awe…

Steven

I am assuming just outgoing data, but I would like to see something in the reverse that helps speed up incoming data (We run a bunch of spiders with massive amounts of incoming data).

In your post, you mention algorithms you’ve developed that optimally utilize available bandwidth and reduce packet loss etc. I know that Internap’s MIRO technology and smart routing does this when you purchase Internap bandwidth. Is your technology complimentary to Internap’s devices like the FCP box or would it replace it?

Thanks for pointing out several subtleties of the technology.

1. You are absolutely right that the idea of proxying a TCP connection is not new, and it is indeed an effective mechanism through which to address many issues that arise in massive infrastructures, as you pointed out. By inserting an appliance between the sender and the Internet, it gives us a way to deal with fluctuations in the Internet and maintain end-to-end application performance. The innovation here is not in convincing the sender to send fast, but the various algorithms to manage network fluctuations effectively to deliver robust performance to the clients. This include algorithms to optimally utilize available bandwidth in Internet, to be extremely resilient to packet loss, to maintain throughput, robustness, and fairness across long distances and heterogeneous receivers.

2. You are also right in pointing out that the basic TCP framework is intact in our approach. We have, however, completely re-designed the *implementation* of key functions in TCP that affect content delivery over the Internet, so that it is more efficient, robust, and evolvable in today’s networks and for today’s applications. We have implemented all these innovations in a way that is TCP-compliant – that’s why the appliance accelerates without having any hardware or software installation at the client side.

Regards
Steven