The acceleration vendor has a whole new twist on acceleration and has redefined what it offers to ISPs.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 1, 2005]

Westport, Conn.-based Artera Group, a subsidiary of publicly listed NCT Group (OTC BB: NTCI), had something new to show at ISPCON in October.

"We learned that ISPs have a low take rate for acceleration and are losing customers to faster services," explains Irv Lebovics, Artera Group senior vice president of global sales.

Artera's answer is this: with a clientless accelerator, simply deploy a server in your network, and accelerate your whole customer base without ever installing software on your customers' computers.

"Lots of ISPs were enthusiastic," says Lebovics. "All ISPs, but especially smaller ISPs, want to eliminate the tech support issues you get with an accelerator. Many support issues are about the interaction between software. ISP customers may not know how to manage their firewall or open ports for the accelerator."

Lebovics says he is eager to hear from ISPs of all sizes, anywhere in the world.

Save bandwidth too
But that's not all, Lebovics says. Even broadband ISPs can benefit from Artera Turbo's other feature: the compression saves ISPs' bandwidth costs. "We don't actually call it an accelerator anymore. We're now calling it the Artera Turbo Bandwidth Optimizer. We reduce download traffic by fifty percent and upload by ten percent."

Satellite providers are also interested in the technology, Lebovics says. "Satellite bandwidth is some of the most expensive in the world."

But DSL providers are intrigued too, he claims. "DSL companies want to make DSL faster to compete with cable. With our product, they get to conserve bandwidth, too."

At ISP-Planet, we believe that any ISP considering acceleration should test the various available products from Artera Turbo, Propel, QuikCAT, Bytemobile, ICT, Proxyconn, and Slipstream Data. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and each company in the industry has a proprietary method, often involving compression, to deliver web pages faster over a dialup connection.

Pricing and availability
The Artera Turbo Clientless Accelerator is available now. Pricing was not disclosed.

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