RocketStream is a communications platform providing accelerated delivery of content over any IP network. RocketStream’s current products provide for the secure and reliable delivery of large files over high-speed networks operating 10-200 times faster than traditional FTP. The product suite consists of six products: RocketStream Uplink Express, Uplink Pro, Station Express, Station Pro, Server Express, and Server Pro.

RocketStream leverages its proprietary transports to overcome the performance limitations of TCP when operating over high-speed connections with measurable latency. In addition to performance benefits, RocketStream also provides enhanced delivery services including real-time payload encryption, compression, and verification. Over adequate bandwidth with measurable latency, RocketStream can usually outperform technologies such as FTP by at least a factor of 10, and sometimes as much as a factor of 200.

RocketStream Uplink, Station, and Server were designed for IT professionals and enterprise customers to move massive amounts of content as fast as possible over high-speed broadband connections. Consumers may also fully exploit RocketStream’s capabilities, but some knowledge of IP networking and firewall configuration may be required.

With the release of RocketStream 1.2, RocketStream Station Free has been discontinued.

Packet latency is the elapsed time required for a packet sent over a network to be received at the destination. A good method to measure latency between two points over the Internet is to use a common computer utility called ping. The ping command will report the round-trip-time (RTT) between any two IP addresses measured in milliseconds. Latency is approximately half the ping time measured.

RocketStream Uplink, Station, and Server are specifically designed to accelerate file transfers over IP networks. Although the RocketStream protocol is capable of accelerating real-time streams of data, such as audio and video feeds, this is not supported in the current version of the product. Contact RocketStream Sales to discuss future implementations of streaming acceleration.

RocketStream allows users to choose between the traditional RocketStream UDP Protocol, which is optimized for maximum acceleration over high-bandwidth connections (greater than 5 Mb/s), and a new PDP variation optimized for slower connections (1 to 5 Mb/s). The PDP setting is therefore appropriate for users with ADSL, cable modem, and T1/E1 connections, while the traditional UDP setting applies to users with Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, DS-3/E3, OC-3/STM-1, or OC-12/STM-4 connections.

If you are connected to the Internet, you can get an approximation for your network connection’s speeds using some common speed test web sites, like Speedtest.net. However, these results will only be an approximation and will vary if other users are also on your network. For a complete end-to-end test and for non-Internet-connected networks (LANs, private networks, etc.), you can use a common tool like Iperf.

Note that your upload and download speeds may not be the same. The throughput you obtain with RocketStream will depend on the smaller of (a) your network connection and (b) the network connection at the far end of the link.

RocketStream provides real-time payload encryption of content, requiring no pre- or post-processing of the file for maximum security.

The SMB and Enterprise editions of RocketStream Station and Uplink provide the option compress files during transit. The performance benefits of using in-flight compression will depend on the type of content transmitted. Large log files, documents, database backups, mainframe extracts, and text data are highly suitable for compression in transit. Non-compressed images may also be compressed in real-time by RocketStream.

The current version of RocketStream supports Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Macintosh OS X v10.4 (Tiger) or later. Contact RocketStream Sales for information about Linux and Unix.

Enterprise and SMB editions of RocketStream have enhanced features for the power user, including real-time payload compression, enhanced security, IP blocking, remote Server administration, job scheduling, hot folders, synchronization, and mirroring. Express and SMG editions of RocketStream are limited to maximum transfer rates of 10 Mbps per connection, while Enterprise 45 versions are limited to 45 Mbps and Enterprise Pro editions are unlimited. For a complete side-by-side feature comparison, click here.

RocketStream is evaluating the development of a client-side SDK for integration into third-party solutions, and to empower developers to leverage the RocketStream technology within their applications. Contact RocketStream Sales for more information.