The leader in TCP-based web performance optimization comments on changes to leading Internet transport protocol

PASADENA, CA – Feb. 13, 2012 – FastSoft, Inc. today commented on new efforts to improve transport control protocol (TCP) performance that were initiated by Google and are being considered by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Website performance is increasingly recognized as an important factor in user satisfaction. Many major Internet sites have improved all aspects of their website performance; the focus of these improvements have now moved down the stack from the application layer to the transport layer.

Google’s “Make the Web Faster” team has been identifying ways to improve the TCP layer to speed up the web. Google’s proposal improves several areas in the existing TCP implementation, including an increase in the initial TCP congestion window size, a reduction of the initial timeout, TCP Fast Open (TFO) that embeds an application-level request in the initial TCP connection request, and a modification to the current loss recovery algorithm known as proportional rate reduction (PRR). All recommendations are currently under testing in various Linux kernel releases.

“The FastSoft team applauds Google’s efforts in identifying TCP performance improvements,” said Cheng Jin, CTO and VP of engineering at FastSoft. “But like any other technical challenge, there are alternative ways to solve the problem. FastSoft has been a leading promoter of transport layer acceleration for the last several years and has taken a different approach to solving the speed problem by addressing the fundamental deficiencies in TCP’s congestion control mechanism.”

Delay-Based Protocols Improve TCP Performance

Unlike the conventional implementation that uses packet loss to infer congestion, FastSoft’s approach, named FastTCP®, uses the queuing delay experienced by packets to govern the speed of TCP data transfer. FastTCP is a delay-based protocol that continually monitors network latency and round trip time (RTT) in order to detect queuing delay and avoid overrunning network buffers. Using equation-based modeling, FastTCP is able to proactively maintain very high throughput with minimal loss. Loss-based protocols behave differently in that they are more reactive, focusing on recovery after packet loss has already occurred. They also employ fixed, rule-based modeling that in many cases is less able to fully utilize available bandwidth.

While algorithms such as Google’s proportional rate reduction (PRR) help to improve recovery in loss-based protocols, FastSoft employs best-of-breed, delay-based protocols backed up by years of research that achieve transport-layer acceleration unmatched by current TCP implementations.

FastSoft’s origin content acceleration (OCA) products are based on TCP performance technology developed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research at Caltech confirms the positive benefits of recommendations such as increasing the initial window size as proposed by Google. FastSoft products have included this feature for several years, but also take it a step further by subsequently growing window sizes as quickly as possible based on intelligent network observations.

FastSoft has conducted numerous tests that show an average acceleration improvement of 30 percent to 500 percent when compared to TCP variants such as TCP Reno (the dominant TCP implementation of the web), TCP CUBIC, Scalable TCP, High Speed TCP (HSTCP), H-TCP, and others. FastSoft is conducting ongoing tests with other transport layer improvements, including PRR, and will publish its findings when available.

FastSoft engineers are continually monitoring transport layer performance recommendations to see if they can provide additional benefit to the company’s flagship E Series appliances and ES Software Module family. FastSoft is currently monitoring progress of Google’s TCP Fast Open proposal and expects to include support for this proposal as it becomes officially adopted.

About FastSoft

FastSoft spun out of the California Institute of Technology to supercharge the Internet for business. FastSoft’s origin content acceleration (OCA) software speeds Internet content delivery by up to 500 percent. FastSoft’s unique server-side solutions improve a user’s Internet content download experience without the need for software or browser modifications on the receiving end. FastSoft’s Internet acceleration solutions are used by some of the largest companies on the Web.
The company is privately held and is located in Pasadena, CA. More information is at www.fastsoft.com.
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Jerry Hall
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