Fixed Wireless Equipment

Propel Delivers Wireless Acceleration

It was an elaborate demo but it made its point. The technology allows ISPs to deliver VoIP and web service even over congested networks. And it works on other forms of broadband too.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [June 5, 2007]

The ISPCON booth of San Jose, Calif.-based accelerator Propel had several laptops set up to demonstrate the company's latest technological advance. ISP-Planet has been following the accelerator industry for some time now and it remains interesting because each company has a slightly different technological approach. In most of the industries we write about, there's only one core technology, but in acceleration, capitalism prevails, providing several different approaches.

Propel's latest product is called Propel Accelwize and is designed for wireless ISPs. The product manages bandwidth to prioritize important traffic, such as VoIP. The setup at Propel's booth allowed the company to demonstrate a voice call over an increasingly congested network.

Dave Murray, Propel's president and COO, acted as our tour guide. He started a VoIP call from one laptop to another. Next, he added traffic in the form of a TCP dump from another laptop, to simulate network congestion. Skype started dropping packets. Then he ran several bandwidth-intensive apps from the original laptop, all the while running a Propel web page test that keeps reloading one website. Traffic all but stopped.

Then, he turned on Propel's technology. The interfering traffic slowed and the web and VoIP traffic went through.

Opportunities
Murray is enthusiastic about the technology. "Cisco and other router makers can prioritize specific traffic flows," he says. "But they find it tough to prioritize encrypted or non-standard traffic like VPNs or Skype. We do this at the endpoint. We use a lightweight client (under 1 MB). The endpoint is under 200 K."

He's enthusiastic about opportunities with WISPs, municipal Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and EV-DO. "I'm using EV-DO in my hotel. The ISP in the hotel is losing customers to the wireless networks," he notes.

Propel can advise an ISP how to write their AUP to allow the sort of bandwidth management that Propel provides.

Pricing and availability
The product is being demonstrated now. Pricing has not yet been announced.

Like many bandwidth shaping manufacturers, Propel says its technology saves ISPs by money by delivering happier customers and by allowing ISPs to better use their current infrastructure and delay the upgrades that would be necessitated by unlimited file sharing.

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