The FileCatalyst® approach to accelerating file transfers has spawned a radical new way of looking at UDP and TCP—two very traditional protocols that help form the backbone of the Internet. Our hybrid approach is based on a “best of both worlds” model that yields faster file transfers—sometimes 100x faster than traditional FTP.

Both UDP and TCP are IP-based protocols, so you instantly leverage the ubiquitous nature of IP networks. Then we use the inherent characteristics behind each protocol to its advantage. As a “dialogue” protocol, TCP can self-correct errors. On the other hand UDP is a “monologue” protocol—very good for bulky one-way transfers.

How can our file transfer solution leverage these protocols to accelerate files? Quite simply, we delegate tasks that each protocol is best suited for. Imagine you need to send the contents of a book to someone, and you have a phone and fax machine. The TCP approach would be to read the book over the phone—very “chatter” intensive, but you could ensure accuracy on a word-by-word basis. The UDP approach would be to fax the whole book but be unsure about what actually went through. Our approach is combining both the fax and phone together. You start faxing the book page-by-page or chapter-by-chapter, while the receiving person uses a phone to tell you which pages are missing or garbled and should be re-sent.

This is exactly how we combine UDP and TCP together for file transfer. TCP is great as a communicative protocol, and we use it to let the client and server applications “talk” with each other to figure out what needs to be sent and how. We use a UDP channel to actually send the data over, because we want to send data in bulk at the fastest rate. FileCatalyst takes this even further, combining advanced algorithms such as on-the-fly compression and “delta” transfers in order to optimize the transfer. These innovative techniques result in a unique way to efficiently accelerate file transfers. Chris Bailey, cofounder of FileCatalyst, talks more about how he started the business and his vision of FileCatalyst. Contact us to get the whole story.