An anonymous reader just got back from an unspecified trade show where he saw this bit of hardware on display from an unnamed company. It doesn’t get any more cloak-and-dagger than this.
Apparently, this is something new called a ?net accelerator?. It is a kind of QoS-in-a-box that analyzes your internet connection and the traffic on the link, and configures itself. Supposedly it detects all kinds of applications on its own. This is so that you can do games, VoIP, file sharing, video, etc. on the internet at the same time and they don?t clobber each other. The guy said that it shapes traffic into ?streams? that share the connection. It has a special chip from a company called Ubicom that was designed to identify each stream , and assign its priority in real-time. Apparently, they use this technology in D-Link?s gaming routers, but those products have the chip embedded inside. They were calling it ?StreamEngine?. He said that these accelerators are going to be sold by ?major OEMs? in about a month.
Actually, if they could sell these little in-line units for cheap (sub-$20, say) it might be worth the money, at least while the consumer routers with this technology remain at a price premium.
