Compress and conquer: Fourelle aims to make wireless Internet/intranet access a reality

While some wireless carriers stay comfortably segmented into a niche of providing voice services to casual users, others are positioning services such as Internet/intranet access to capture a more ambitious and potentially lucrative market.

The list of carriers positioning these services is short. The list of tools allowing them to do so effectively is even shorter, and so is the list of users that are ready to spend money on wireless Internet access. However, all three lists likely will grow quickly in the next few years.

This all sounds like the makings of an eventual wireless Internet/intranet revolution, and as it happens, the industry's already precious wireless bandwidth will at an even greater premium.

Fourelle Systems, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is trying to help wireless carriers make the most of that bandwidth as they begin to pursue Internet/intranet applications.

"In wireless, everything is secondary to the cost of bandwidth," said Patrick Glenn, chairman and chief executive officer of Fourelle.

The four-year-old company is addressing the market with a proxy-based compression solution called the Venturi Bandwidth Multiplier. The technology, developed over the last two years, was conceived for cellular digital packet data (CDPD) networks as a way of overcoming CDPD's lackluster-bandwidth, high-cost nature.

Venturi operates based on two proxies devoted to compression and decompression of data traffic. For instance, an Internet/intranet query goes out from a user's browser to a Venturi client proxy on a PC or local area network workstation for compression. Then, it is transmitted over CDPD links to a Venturi compression server, likely located at the network access point (NAP) to the Internet, for decompression and final routing. Responses are compressed at the server proxy and decompressed at the client proxy.

Compression rates will vary but can average 80% for text message and 35% for graphics. Using a 28.8 kb/s modem connection typical Web browsing, Venturi can maintain an average throughput improvement of 30%, or closer to the performance of a 56 kb/s modem.

"You get good compression when you can embed that capability in a central processing unit and at the NAP. That way you don't add weight to the client side, and you get the compression throughout all the network links," said Bob Smith, president and chief technical officer.

Venturi supports a wide range of Internet protocols for browsers and transmissions, including HTTP, HTML, FTP, NNTP and POP3/ SMTP.

So far, GoAmerica Communications, a pioneer wireless ISP, has signed on to deploy Venturi, and Vanguard Cellular and several other carriers are evaluating the technology.

Fourelle demonstrated Venturi at the Networld+Interop show earlier this month and plans to discuss the solution at next week's CTIA Wireless Apps expo in Seattle, a show that rose out of a need for greater industry support of CDPD and wireless data applications.

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