ISPCON Interview: A Conversation with David Murray

The Propel co-founder says that the company's technology has improved to the point where the Propel can help broadband connections, wired and wireless, but he sees other opportunities too.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 7, 2006]

Dialup acceleration has always been one of the more interesting vendor markets for us at ISP-Planet, because the various vendors have offered truly different products based on different technological approaches to the same problem.

But at ISPCON, only two accelerator companies showed, Propel and SlipStream. The others are not doing so well, and therefore the field of competition is far smaller than it was.

We'll have more on SlipStream and its acquisition by RIM tomorrow. Today, we describe our conversation with tech veteran and Propel COO, president, and co-founder David Murray.

Murray said that San Jose, Calif.-based Propel is expanding on all fronts. While it is selling to large dialup ISPs in Russia and South America, it is looking to new markets such as China.

The company's technology has improved as well. "We're now at the point where we can add value on faster connections," Murray says. "And our text compression technology typically compresses text 20 to 30 percent smaller than gzip."

The market
Although the company can accelerate broadband connections, the market opportunity for accelerator vendors will always be dialup, and perhaps slower broadband connections. "There will always be people to the left of the connection speed midpoint," Murray says. So as speeds increase, and what was fast yesterday becomes what's slow tomorrow, somewhere there will be someone with a slower connection who's in the market for acceleration.

Murray says accelerators are particularly useful to users who have accounts with usage-based pricing. "We provide a reduction in bandwidth usage, so if there's a monthly data cap, that translates into more surfing within the limit."

He says although the product offers clear benefits to users on fixed wireless networks, it's difficult to demonstrate the benefits over a short period time. If you're doing a demo, and the actual throughput of the connection is changing, you cannot demonstrate that your product is improving the experience. On the other hand, Murray says, the bandwidth reduction does show up in the long term.

Another benefit the product offers wireless users is a result of its TCP improvement. The technology reduces the number of roundtrip connections between the end user's PC and the website, and this, Murray says, reduces the number of connections between the CPE and the AP.

Gotta wear shades
Murray says the future of Propel is therefore bright, with many market opportunities to pursue. "We've grown," he notes.

In addition, Propel has spun off its anti-spam technology. The Abaca Technology Corporation is still at the same address as Propel. Abaca is doing well and recently announced a technology alliance with Coyote Point Systems.

— End