Aria: Faster voice and video transfers
Aria, a new product from California-based startup FastSoft, speeds up the transfer of any large file over the Internet, without requiring hardware or software on the receiving end. According to Dan Henderson, FastSoft’s vice president of product and market development, a 700-megabyte movie file that takes 50 minutes to download regionally via a cable-modem connection can be downloaded in 34 minutes if the sender uses Aria. Overseas transfers show a bigger difference, with the same 700-megabyte movie taking nearly eight hours to download from Asia via a cable modem, and about 45 minutes with Aria.
Aria, which is based on research from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), tries to make the most of the available bandwidth. Data usually isn’t transferred at a line’s full capacity. This is because the transmission control protocol (TCP) that governs 90 percent of the traffic flow over the Internet hasn’t kept up with the times. Researchers designed FastTCP, the algorithm behind Aria, to improve standard TCP protocol. In academic trials, FastTCP has set data-transfer records, transferring data at a sustained rate of 101 gigabits per second. That’s equivalent to transmitting the contents of the Library of Congress in 15 minutes. FastTCP monitors the real-time transfer speed of each packet of information, watching for delays. This way, adjustments can be made smoothly. I don’t see a big difference between downloading a movie in 45 or 30 minutes, but fast internet is always welcomed.
Source: TechReview
Comments(21)
Looks good, but does the extra 15 or so mins really make a difference!!
Here are a couple of publications on FastTCP for anyone interested:
http://netlab.caltech.edu/pub/papers/FAST-ToN-final-060209.pdf
http://netlab.caltech.edu/pub/papers/fast-network05.pdf
And here is the company’s website:
http://www.fastsoft.com/
They claim that the product is standalone (i.e. no Aria endpoints are required on peers). Thats great (if it works as promised).
You can do it yourself with DrTCP to modify the TCP stack automatically for free.
8 hours for a 700mb file..yeah right.what are they using..a WWII modem?i dont have the fastest connection around but a movie only takes about 30min to 1hour to get on my hard drive..
8 hours..hah
50min for a 700mb movie, that would have been decent like 7 years ago. I could get down a full dvd in less than 50minutes and still not even use a third of my bandwidth.
yup i on 8 meg !
@Previous commenters:
I think you need to pay a bit more attention.
The product is designed to speed up a connection, so that *if* it takes 50mins to transfer, then Aria could speed it up so it only takes 34.
The numbers are not the maximum speed that can be achieved by any connection. The maximum speed achieved using the FastTCP algo (but not the Aria product) seem to be 151 Gbps! (source:ultralight.caltech.edu/web-site/sc05/html/index.html)
lol some ppl here just dont know shit.. do some research about the technology first before making idiotic comments
It only takes 15 minutes to download a 700mb movie on an 8mb connection for me so what would I use this thing for?
to make your 15 minute download only take 10 you r-tard
I can already tell many of you have no background in mathematics.
“50min for a 700mb movie, that would have been decent like 7 years ago. I could get down a full dvd in less than 50minutes”
“50min for a 700mb movie” was only an example to demonstrate the increase in speed. People who attack an example being used, when the sample makes perfect sense, are simple minded.
This is silly, the tcp overhead isn’t that high; for example the difference between TCP and UDP (which has basically no overhead) is nowhere near the 32% performance increase that this thing claims. I’d be very skeptical until I saw this actually working.
Unless they are running some kind of ridiculous packet compression? In which case file sharing users won’t see an improvement anyway.
Hmm, I looked it up, and actually it works to eliminate not the packet overhead as I assumed, but line congestion when your bandwidth is being raped by filesharing programs.
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAST_TCP
That doesn’t make sense… a 700meg file taking 50 minutes on a cable modem? Even at 4mbps speeds.. that file should at MAX take 25 minutes… My 8mbps pulls that same file down in about 12 minutes now… What kind of cable speeds are they basing this off of???
This doesn’t make sense… What cable speed are they basing this test off of?
A 4mbps connection pulls about 500KB a second.. that 700MB file would take at most… about 25 mins…
My 8mpbs connection pulls down about 1000KB a second… that same 700MB file takes me about 12 minutes…
So using this thing saved them (on their testing stats) – 32% of download time…
So using this 32% savings… If I were to use it on my 8mbps connect… instead of taking 12 minutes… it would take me…….. a little over 8 minutes??
Joe,
No, it won’t increase *your* throughput, it’ll increase theirs.
i.e. say you had a 10mbps connection, but only pulled in 6-7mbps from their server, with the use of that product it might jump to 9-10
or so I assume, but it won’t increase the available bandwidth of your connection, that I do know.
about the 8hrs, it would take 8hrs to download 700mb from aisa if you lived in the usa, most of these examples use a 2mbit connection which belive it or not is the average broadband speed
1. Actually the going average going connection is 1mb factoring it by 8 gives a throughput of 125KB’s OK??? there is life beyond the USA.
2. A 700+MB file takes more or less, assuming direct connections and no traffic shaping on p2p traffic about just under 2hours depending on route and network congestion.
IF with traffic shaping bandwidth limits on p2p traffic – YES about 8hours.
facts based from Malaysia …
p.s. thanks for the links