Another Generation of Networking Equipment

The newly founded company Anagran announced the launch of a revolutionary router that should help improve the general and especially the multimedia performance of a network. The Anagran FR-1000 Flow Router is designed to "meet the demands of the new generation of video, voice, data and wireless applications", according to a company's press release. The Anagran FR-1000 Flow Router is the first router built for these kinds of applications and it is designed from the start to be a "green" piece of hardware as it has the lowest energy consumption available today. "Content is revolutionizing the network," said Dr. Roberts, founder and CEO of Anagran. "Unfortunately, large fixed rate flows like video are not supported well with current-day routers which have freeze-frame, jitter, and general scalability challenges under even the most moderate levels of network congestion".

The Anagran FR-1000 Flow Router is compatible with standard network routers, but it works better by constantly monitoring the informational flow, as opposed to traditional routers that simply process and direct separate data packets without regarding their content. The Anagran router looks for the higher level of data flow and based on certain priorities, it delivers the most critical needed information at the best possible speed. This is possible because of a technology named Intelligent Flow Discard that is implemented in the router and which gives it "a totally new approach to traffic control and congestion management which proactively meters all incoming flows by class to fill the output capacity to a sustained 90 - 95%, virtually eliminating delay and packet losses caused by traditional routers' large output queues under traffic overload".

Another new technology employed by the Anagran router is the Behavioral Traffic Control that can deliver real time services like audio and video feeds by adjusting every flow's rate on the network. Another great point for the Anagran FR-1000 Flow Router is that, following the green standards of the hardware industry, it uses only a fraction (20 percent) of the power normally required by traditional routers. This translates both in lower electricity costs but also frees valuable space and materials that would be otherwise expended to cooling devices.

"With skyrocketing demand for voice, video, and P2P-based Web 2.0 services, enterprise and service provider networks are straining to deliver the level of performance these applications require and users expect," said Michael Kennedy, founder and managing partner, Network Strategy Partners. As the Anagran router was built to reside at the very edge of the network, it is easily deployable in any network configuration, more so since it will work with any other router or WAN "optimization or deep packet inspection product".