Application Acceleration Technology - A Boon
By Vijay Kaul

Many corporations require combined voice, video and Internet access with a two-way Internet bandwidth of at least 100 Mbps. This is a forward-looking composite requirement that recognizes that a typical corporation with 250+ employees will be watching videos, talking on the telephone, and accessing the Internet all at the same time.

About 300 million people in the world are telecommuting to work today. Better, faster, and cheaper communication infrastructure would mean a phenomenal increase in productivity and a better quality of life.

Knowing the impact of Internet on mankind and despite hundreds of terabyte Internet bandwidth capacity across the world, what is stopping us from using bandwidth to its full extent? Why are we still talking of speed in terms of kilobits when hundreds of terabyte Internet capacities have already been laid and tested?

The fiber glut

There exists a vast international bandwidth capacity across all continents and countries connecting their various cities and towns and terminating at various places that are called Point of Presence (PoP). More than a billion Internet users exist throughout the world. The challenge consists of connecting these users to the nearest POP. The connectivity between various client sites and POPs, called the last mile connectivity, is the bottleneck.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) built the long haul and backbone networks spending billions over the past five years. ISPs spent to this extent to increase the broadband capacity by 250 times in long haul; yet, the capacity in the metro area increased only 16 fold. Over this period, the last mile access has remained the same, with the result that data moves very slowly in the last mile. Upgrading to higher bandwidths is either not possible or the cost is extremely prohibitive. The growth of Internet seems to have reached a dead end, with possible adverse effects on the quality and quantity of the Internet bandwidth that is available for the growing needs of enterprises and consumers.Compounding this is the technical limitations of Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).

TCP/IP limitations