Larry Roberts, who is credited for co-founding the Internet (as developer of the early ArpaNet), today launched the first product of his latest networking company, Anagran.
Called the FR-1000 Flow Router, its designed to meet the demands of the new generation of video, voice, data and wireless applications, and use less energy. Notably, in pitching the product, Robert talks about the need for "flow-based" networking to get around the limitations of today's Internet packet technology. That's the same pitch he used when launching his last company, Caspian, which performed dismally.
That company last September was forced to throw in the towel after burning through $317 million in venture capital from firms like US Venture Partners and Oak Investment.
We wish him better luck with Redwood City's Anagran. Market conditions are much more favorable today than they were when Caspian came to market amid the post-bubble meltdown.
Anagran has been around for three years, since Roberts left Caspian. It has raised $22 million from Argon Capital, ArrowPath Venture Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Here's a snippet from its launch statement today:
Anagran’s Fast Flow RoutingTM architecture looks at each packet as part of its higher level flow and based on specified priorities, intelligently delivers the most critical information at the highest quality of performance. This is accomplished through Intelligent Flow DiscardTM, 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. The FR-1000 keeps critical statistics on each flow in real time—the source, destination, the amount of traffic running, the duration, and other key statistics that define the nature and health of the flow. To ensure sustained performance and quality for critical “real time” services like video and voice, the router uses Behavioral Traffic ControlTM to prohibit any flows from using more than their appropriate share of network resources by adjusting every flow’s class, rate, or route to control P2P or any other traffic type. The result—guaranteed real time application performance delivery— flawless video and voice, faster downloads, and minimal delay for all traffic. On top of this, the FR-1000 can reduce network costs by 10 to 1.
