Putting Realism Into Your Network

Larry Chaffin

Previous Article Next Article

Could start-up FastSoft be the next big thing at Interop?

By Larry Chaffin on Wed, 04/30/08 - 10:12am.

While other people are going to the free meals and executive talks with the big companies, I was spending my time looking at the companies we don't know. Looking for that one company who I thought could make a difference and, I think I might have found it. In the little row called Startup where other members of the press came by and gave companies five minutes, paid no attention and left. I spent 45 minutes asking every question. I am very sure I overwhelmed the staff of the 6 foot booth but sometimes you have to ask the hard questions.

So what is Fastsoft? That is the same thing I was saying when I visited the small booth on startup row, looked like another wana be player in the WAN Acceleration movement. But what I found was that they have a place and they will not compete with Cisco, Riverbed or Juniper in the space. Fastsoft only needs one box at the data center; no end box to buy and no agents to load on the far side. These boxes start at around 10k and go to 80k. They will not reduce your bandwidth like other players; you will not get an ROI back that way. What they do is use a self designed FastTCP protocol to detect congestion on the line. Then it makes adjustments so the line stays smooth without the bursts.

They can take a 25GB Blue Ray file on a 1Gbps pipe from New York to Los Angeles in 22 minutes where it was taking 45 minutes. Now let's look at New York to London with a 700mb CD File that took 1 minute instead of 14 minutes. Another good test was Los Angeles to London over a 100mbps pipe sending a DVD Disc file of 4.75GB. It took 9 minutes instead of 128 minutes. The results are good so far so what could be next and where could you see this helping you?

Netflix would be a great company to use this, Apple and ITunes would be another great bet, any company wanting to speed up the delivery of the content in audio or video formats. We will have to ask Fastsoft to send us a box for testing, but all looks bright for this young startup.

Tags

About Putting Realism Into Your Network

Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the Chief Executive Officer/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a Consulting and VAR partner specializing in WAN acceleration, VoIP, WLAN, telepresence and security.

Pluto Networks is a Riverbed reseller. Pluto was previously a Cisco reseller but in June, 2010, ended its reseller relationship with the company and is no longer a Cisco channel partner.

Pluto Networks specializes in the needs of small, large and enterprise companies by always giving them a great ROI on the products they sell. Pluto Networks has a presence in 23 countries around the world enabling all of its consultants to be virtual. Larry was a Judge at Interop for the Best of Interop Awards for 2009.

Larry has also co-authored all of the books listed below:

Managing Cisco Secure Networks, Skype Me, Practical VOIP Security, Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1,Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls,Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless Security, How to Cheat at Microsoft Vista Administration, Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals, Asterisk Hacking, 2008 VoIP and Video Conferencing, Infosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.

Larry also has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration. Larry is working with worldwide company now out of Asia as a Special Assistant to the CEO and CIO as they go through organizational and network changes, helping them with strategic advice from his years of experience.

Pluto Networks is a channel partner of, LifeSize, Riverbed, Call Copy, Fastsoft and Symantec.