Using DNA pattern-matching technologies developed at Stanford University, Peribit has developed sequence reducer boxes that allow designers to improve link bandwidth by detecting and compressing repeating patterns over WAN links. At the same time, the company has developed a packet flow acceleration (PFA) technology to reduce latencies caused by the TCP protocol.

Peribit first began publicizing its PFA architecture in September (see Sept. 15, page 28). At the time, the company released few details as to how PFA provided TCP optimizations. Just three months later, however, Peribit is talking about how these optimizations occur.

Peribit improves latency using two approaches, said Amit Singh, the company's chief technology officer. The first is through the use of a fast connection setup method that reduces latency during the TCP setup process.

Before packets can be sent, many networks must go through a TCP setup process, where communication must be first established between the server and client before data can be passed. Through the fast-connection-setup mode, data can be carried in conjunction with TCP setup tags, thus reducing latency in the link, Singh said.

To complement its fast-connection-setup mode, Peribit is also delivering a flow-pipelining mode that speeds the transfer of large files. This mode allows the traffic management box on the server side to do an acknowledgement on behalf of the client, said Dan Leary, vice president of product management at Peribit. Then, this mode allows the system to buffer large files at the client in order to reduce the transfer time required to send those large files over a WAN link. According to Leary, this mode can reduce the transfer time from more than 14 minutes to under four minutes.

With its PFA technology in place, Peribit is also trying to make it easier for network operators to implement its traffic management products in a network architecture. Typically, Peribit's traffic management systems are used directly in the signal path. However, in some network architectures featuring a collapsed router/switch architecture or high-availability, mesh architecture, this approach will not work.

To solve the problem, Peribit has developed a packet intercept mode that permits operators to deploy its systems without changing the default gateway. The mode comes in route injection, Web cache and external-mode options.

With this mode now added, Advent said it plans to implement Peribit's SR-50 and SR-20 systems to handle backup and data replication traffic between its data centers in New York and San Francisco.

The PFA and packet intercept mode are supported on Perabit's SR20, SR50, SR55 and SR-80 sequence reducer platforms.