Akamai announced today that it is expanding its Web application acceleration services to include any IP-based application, including VoIP.

Akamai, a content delivery network service provider based in Cambridge, Mass., has been delivering Web application acceleration services since 2005. However, the company’s new IP Application Accelerator is its first product that covers every enterprise application delivered over IP. Neil Cohen, product line manager at Akamai, says the new service will allow companies to speed up all of their IP applications, reduce their operating expenditures and boost productivity.

The accelerator works through a program called SureRoute, which continuously scours the Web for the fastest and most reliable path to an origin server, much like a traffic helicopter that reports on which roads are clogged and which roads are open during rush hour. This method of routing Internet traffic to the fastest path, says Cohen, is a key to reducing latency for IP-based applications that depend on consistent delivery, such as VoIP, live chat and secure file transfers. Previously, the accelerator only covered HTTP-based Web applications.

In addition to making IP-based applications faster, says Cohen, the accelerator can also limit the effects of packet loss on end users. Though Cohen notes that it would be impossible to completely eliminate packet loss, he says that Akamai’s service can “make it look like packet loss goes away from the end user prospective” through a number of techniques, such as sending packets through multiple streams, which lessens the time that a lost packet can be recovered.

Tests performed by Akamai have shown that an IP application sent from Cambridge to Los Angeles using the accelerator experienced no packet loss and a latency of 79 milliseconds. The same application sent over a public Internet path, the company found, experienced 1.91% packet loss and 202 ms latency.

Unlike Akamai’s previous Web application acceleration service, which granted access to Akamai’s global server network in exchange for subscription fees, the IP Application Accelerator requires the installation of a “Gateway Region” server at the customer premise that is used to intercept packets and forward them to the origin server.