SuperFAST™ Accelerator Overview

Propel Accelerator improves your browsing experience by dramatically accelerating the delivery of Web pages to your computer. Our unique combination of persistent connections, intelligent browser caching, and compression technology enables Web pages to be delivered to your browser with minimal latency at maximum speeds over your existing low-speed Internet connection. As a result, you can expect a very noticeable improvement in response time.

Low-speed Internet connections are those connections, regardless of technology, that Propel Accelerator measures at or below 400 kilobits in speed and include cellular and fixed wireless, dial-up, ISDL, satellite, ISDN, ADSL, cable, and WiFi.


Accerator Architecture



The figure above depicts the relationships between the various components of the SuperFAST Acceleration and how they interact with one another:

• The Propel Accelerator Client Software (or Propel Client) runs in the background on your computer as a local proxy. The Propel Client maintains a persistent connection to the Propel Network in order to eliminate the connections that need to be established every time the browser initiates a request. The Propel Client decodes and caches the content it receives from the Propel Network before sending it to the Web browser.

• The Propel Network sits between the Propel Client running on your computer and the Web sites you are trying to reach. The Propel Network consists of a collection of strategically deployed servers that manage connections and encode data received from the destination sites. By doing so, the Propel Network reduces the distance data must travel, and at the same time reduces the amount of data transmitted.

Methods of Acceleration

Propel Accelerator speeds up the delivery of Web pages in three ways:

• Compression. Propel delivers text and graphics more efficiently, using a patent-pending compression technology that allows for intelligent encoding of Web pages and page elements sent to your browser.

• Caching. Propel intelligently retains and re-uses Web pages and page elements that have previously been sent to your computer. That's why the longer Propel Accelerator is in use on your computer, the faster your Web pages will load.

• Persistent Connections. Propel uses proprietary techniques to carefully manage and optimize the communication between your modem and our servers using a persistent connection.

The table below shows some popular Web site pages and the range of acceleration you should expect to see from Propel Accelerator. These numbers were obtained using the Propel Accelerator Performance Test Tool.

*Average time calculated based on loading the home page. First time visit to a Web page loads on average 2 times faster. Subsequent visits to the page load, on average,
3 times faster.

An Example

An easy way to understand what Propel Accelerator does is to consider a simplified example.

Using maximum graphics acceleration, a first-time visit to a Web page with Propel
Accelerator will be up to 3 times faster, with an average first-time visit greater than 2x.

For example, the first time you request the Amazon home page, the following events occur:

• The request for the Web page is automatically routed by the Propel Client to the Propel Network.

• The Propel Network retrieves the requested Web page from the Amazon Web site.

• Elements of the Web page (both text and graphics) are encoded and cached before being sent to your computer.

• These page elements are then decoded by the Propel Client, and assembled and delivered to the Web browser.
  
  

Subsequent visits to the same page will be up to 5 times faster.

The next time you visit the Amazon home page (which may have changed since the last visit), the following events occur:

• Your request for the Web page is automatically routed by the Propel Client to the Propel Network.

• The Propel Network retrieves the requested Web page from the Amazon Web site. Having identified the page elements that had previously been retrieved in a prior visit, the Propel Network only compresses and transmits those components that have changed.

• Data already stored on your computer - plus any new decoded page elements - are assembled locally by the Propel Client and delivered to the Web browser.