FastTCP could speed IPTV over copper

A new version of Total Control Protocol or TCP, which governs most Internet traffic, could be a major new weapon for telecom companies looking to speed delivery of IPTV over their existing copper networks.

FastSoft, a venture capital-backed spinoff from Cal Tech, this week introduced a version of its FastTCP technology that targets content distribution networks (CDNs) and enterprise customers, but can be useful in IPTV deployments as well. The FastSoft E 1000 delivers 1 Gigabit per second capacity to speed up content delivery by up to 10 times, with the goal of making it easier to make money distributing video, complex graphics and image files, software upgrades and other rich media over the Internet.

What makes the E 1000 particularly attractive, said Dan Henderson, vice president of marketing for FastSoft, is that it doesn’t require any upgrades or changes on the receiving end of the transmission.

“We see a number of growth opportunities in other areas, but for telcos, we are in IPTV trials right now,” Henderson said. “In an IPTV network, even though the customer has a set-top box, what we found is that service providers are very interested in getting more throughput than they can on existing pipes, so they can deliver more high-speed video into the home over the existing bandwidth.”

FastSoft was launched in 2006 by the Caltech team that developed FastTCP, a new version of TCP better designed to handle all that the Internet has become since the original TCP was invented, Henderson said. The Caltech research was funded by DARPA, the National Science Foundation and Cisco and won the “SuperComputing Bandwidth Challenge” four years in a row, before being presented to the IETF as the basis of a next-generation standard. Cisco was willing to sponsor the technology, Henderson said, but the Caltech team chose to spin it off as a venture-backed startup, now starting to raise its second round of venture money.