Hotlens has developed the Bandwidth TurboBooster(TM) networking product especially to enable Internet Over Satellite Service Providers to deliver extremely high throughput for TCP/IP traffic over satellite communication links. The product is a robust implementation of the Space Communications Protocol Standards Transport Protocol (SCPS-TP) joinly developed by NASA and DOD.

Hotlens Bandwidth TurboBooster™ product is an extensible IP traffic processing platform. Currently, customers can purchase TCP Acceleration Module, Web Acceleration Module, Compression Module and Bandwidth Management Module based on their specific needs.

Key Advantages
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- Integration of essential network functionalities
- An easy to deploy appliance
- Comprehensive features
- Superior performance
- Cost effectiveness

TCP Acceleration Module
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The product can increase the speed of ftp, smtp, pop3, imap and other TCP based protocols through the TCP Acceleration Module which is a robust implementation of the Space Communications Protocol Standards Transport Protocol (SCPS-TP).

Web Acceleration Module
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Because typical web pages consists of many small objects and HTTP opens a new TCP connection for each small object, the Web Acceleration Module further increases the speed of http and https through our proprietary connection multiplexing technology. The Web Acceleration Module further increases the speed and decreases the quantity of transmitted data of http and https through an embedded cache engine.

Compression Module
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The Compression Module provides lossless compression for ftp, smtp, pop3, imap, http, https and other IP based protocols. It decreases the quantity of transmitted data as well as increases the speed of transfer. It works with standard mail packages such as Outlook, Outlook Express and Lotus Notes.

Bandwidth Management Module
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The Bandwidth Management Module provides full feature bandwidth management with class based multiple level traffic policy and statistics for fine grain management of bandwidth.

The product operates in a multi-user scenario through our specialised hardware. The appliance is transparent to end users meaning no changes whatsoever is required on end user PCs.

Performance
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The performance improvements that you get depends on the available physical bandwidth, network latency, bit error rate, network utilization and payload compressibility. However, in general, it can achieve an acceleration between 2 - 20 times and a bandwidth savings of 10% - 90%.

A large telecom service provider has deployed the product in 44 countries around the world. The country office in Eritrea uses a satellite network of 2 Mbps downlink, 256 Kbps uplink, 700 ms latency, 10-5 bit error rate with high link utilization. Below are the results obtained from the Eritrea office:

FTP Normal Transfer: 98.24 kbps
FTP Accelerated Transfer: 1108.56 kbps
HTTP Normal Transfer: 99.52 kbps
HTTP Accelerated Transfer: 705.44 kbps
HTTPS Normal Transfer: 94.64 kbps
HTTPS Accelerated Transfer: 776.00 kbps

Comparisons
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Customers have selected the product over other products because of the
followings in no specific order:

- The product provides a single integrated easy to deploy appliance for small and big offices. Other products only provide one or two of the TCP acceleration, web acceleration, caching, compression and bandwidth management functionalities offered by the product. Trying to make separate products from different vendors to work together is very difficult and expensive. For example, compression products do not work well with separate bandwidth management products. At the same time, most compression products do not provide full feature multilevel class based bandwidth management functionality required for fine grain control of bandwidth.

- The product works well in bandwidth-on-demand (variable bandwidth) situations. It has been deployed with bandwidth-on-demand FlexiDAMA satellite equipment in production networks. Other products are known not to work well with bandwidth-on-demand FlexiDAMA satellite equipments as well as variable bandwidth compression products.

- The product provides both TCP acceleration based on the SCPS-TP protocol as well as web acceleration based on our proprietary connection multiplexing technology to give the best web page access speed improvement in a satellite environment. Other products either provide TCP acceleration for satellite environment without specialized web acceleration or provide specialized web acceleration without TCP acceleration for satellite environment.

- The product provides caching for https traffic which is not supported in traditional caching products.

- The product provides the flexibility to select the protocols to acceleration and the protocols to ignore to best utilise the processing power of the device as well as to prevent accelerating virus attacks!

- The product provides comprehensive statistics and reports for fine grain network management.

- The product supports multicast protocol in a multi-user scenario.