Ubicom(TM), Inc., a leading provider of communications processors and software solutions, today announced the industry's first "Network Accelerator" -- a new low-cost retail device designed to significantly improve the performance and quality of gaming, voice-over-IP (VoIP) and video applications by eliminating quality problems caused by the uplink bottleneck found in traditional home and small office local area networks (LANs). Based on Ubicom's StreamEngine(TM) technology, the Ubicom Network Accelerator is available through leading networking companies including D-Link and Hawking Technology.

Online gaming, VoIP and file sharing are driving the need for a new class of high-performance networking solutions in the home and small office. Users of these applications often attribute game lag or poor VoIP and video quality to a problem with "the Internet." In reality these issues are caused in most part by applications competing for the small amount of uplink bandwidth provided by cable or xDSL modems before the data reaches the public Internet. In testing, Ubicom has demonstrated that this phenomenon can reduce voice quality by a factor of four and destroy the effectiveness of an online game player by up to three times.

"The Ubicom Network Accelerator solves the uplink bottleneck problem," said Keith Morris, Vice President of Marketing for Ubicom, "by bringing high performance and great quality to the home network for gaming, voice and video applications for the first time. More importantly, the StreamEngine technology embedded in this solution is able to do this automatically without the need for complex and error-prone configuration."

Consumers can add the D-Link Systems or Hawking Technology products to their home network and enjoy public switched telephone network (PSTN)-quality VoIP telephone calls, faster online gaming performance, and smoother Webcam video performance. The Ubicom Network Accelerator is the first cost-effective, consumer, mass-market solution for the networking bottlenecks found in home and small office networking environments.

"We are very pleased with the development of Ubicom's StreamEngine technology, and are happy to be incorporating it in the D-Link Broadband Internet/VoIP Accelerator," said Brian Larsen, associate vice president for product development at D-Link. "The D-Link Broadband Internet/VoIP Accelerator takes standard small and home office networks, and helps organize the data traffic to improve the quality of VoIP traffic during times of heavy network activity."

The Ubicom Network Accelerator improves performance and quality through the following capabilities:

-- Analyzes and automatically identifies delay-sensitive traffic

-- Dynamically prioritizes delay-sensitive traffic ahead of normal traffic

-- Limits uplink delay by controlling packet sizes

-- Shapes uplink traffic speed to match WAN link

"Utilizing Ubicom's StreamEngine technology has allowed Hawking to develop the HBB1 Broadband Booster which boosts the speed of time-sensitive Internet applications (such as online gaming, VoIP telephone calls and video streaming) by up to 400%," said Jason Owen, senior product development manager at Hawking Technology.

Tim Higgins, managing editor of TomsNetworking, reviewed the Hawking HBB1 Broadband Booster at http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Reviews-210-ProdID-HBB1-1.php. The following quote was taken from the review: "The HBB1 did a stellar job of preventing the FTP upload from degrading VoIP traffic. I even ran two simultaneous FTP uploads to further stress the HBB1. Without the HBB1, the dual FTP test drove packet discards up to 2.1% and the MOS (mean opinion score) down to 3.0. But with the HBB1 inserted, packet discards once again dropped to 0% and the MOS was back at 4.4. Pretty impressive!"