| TrueDelivery's user interface, Courier, lets users drag and drop to send files, transfer them like e-mail, and track their delivery. |
Anybody who has sat at a PC waiting for big files to download can relate to a new development from Radiance Technologies Inc. in Los Altos, Calif. The firm has won patents that cover data-transfer technologies for sending giga and terabyte-sized files over the Internet and other IP-based networks.
One patent is for scheduling and executing data transfers, and the other is for controlling their rates. The patents cover algorithms in the company's TrueDelivery software for applications in military, manufacturing, and medical-device areas.
One Radiance file-transfer algorithm, for example, breaks files into "linear packages" that are sent as multiple, parallel transfers, rather than the single, monolithic transfers typical of other methods. The company says this lets users see bandwidth efficiencies as high as 80% on a pipe, compared to 25% from other modes. Other algorithms provide intelligence for the sharing of resources on network nodes and setting resource objectives such as storage space, data-delivery deadlines, and data costs. The company says conventional algorithms, in contrast, send data across nodes in a best-effort method.