Deliver a faster and more responsive mobile experience with Enea TCP Accelerator
TCP Accelerator is a clientless solution that accelerates the mobile Internet experience by optimizing/accelerating TCP and bandwidth utilization. This lets you deliver a more responsive experience for mobile users with faster page load times, immediate access to content, and a smoother video experience. TCP Accelerator works in conjunction with the Enea’s optimization product portfolio to deliver the best customer experience at the lowest possible cost. As a transport protocol TCP is foundational to internet access and accounts for over half mobile data – check out our recent insight into TCP v UDP on a shared network.
Efficient Network Utilization Through TCP Acceleration
Traditional TCP was not designed with mobile networks in mind. Even sporadic packet loss, not necessarily caused by congestion, can drastically slow transfer rates and webpage loading times and degrade the video streaming experience, leading to customer dissatisfaction. Maximizing the efficiency of the transport layer in mobile data networks, TCP Accelerator reduces webpage loading and rendering times by compressing and caching popular content close to the user.
TCP Acceleration Benefits for Operators
Improved Quality of Experience that results in increased revenue
TCP Accelerator improves the effective subscriber throughput by up to 30% and reduces loading times by up to 25%, even in adverse network conditions.
Optimal utilization of network resources that maximizes profitability
By accelerating at the TCP level and transferring data faster, network resources are released earlier and can be further consumed by more users.
Deferment in network investment
Due to RAN coverage expansion, through a significant improvement in the delivery of data under variable network conditions, where traditional TCP operation is ineffective.
Optimal Efficiency for All TCP Traffic, Including HTTPS (Secure Traffic)
Advanced image optimization technology reduces the time needed to deliver image content while retaining the visual quality, file format and image resolution.
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Enea’s technology allows us to effectively manage all our streaming data, including encrypted video, resulting in a very positive impact on subscriber QoE
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TELUS is proud to partner with Enea and give our customers a better experience while watching videos
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The innovative solution from Enea has been impressive. They have demonstrated their expertise and backed it up with excellent levels of service
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Secure Traffic Manager and RAN Congestion Manager effectively manage encrypted and non-encrypted traffic, reduce RAN congestion and improve subscribers’ quality of experience.
TCP Acceleration Frequently Asked Questions
TCP is transmission control protocol. It is a fundamental part of the internet – at layer 4 of the OSI stack – sitting above the Internet Protocols (aka IPv4 and IPv6); In other words it is not application content like web pages (HTML) or Video Streaming – rather it is a transport mechanism for that content. A metaphor would be railway freight cars – the freight car + track is transport without knowing/caring what is inside the freight car. In Mobile Telecoms TCP accounts for 50-55% of the transmitted traffic.
TCP is designed to be a reliable protocol, in other packets that are transmitted are verified as received; if no verification of receipt then the packets are retransmitted. In other words TCP relies on acknowledgment between sender and receiver of the content transmitted as well as the quantity of that content at any one time – at each stage of the many waypoints between your mobile device and the application server (and back again). TCP is labelled as a connection-orientated protocol.
UDP is a connectionless protocol that attempts to avoid retransmits at transport level. UDP is more of a per packet-based acknowledgment between sender and receiver. Many packets can be sent without acknowledgment and may go by different routes between mobile device and content server. UDP is labelled as a connectionless protocol.
The QUIC protocol (defined by IETF) has built rules on top of the UDP protocol to govern the transport of content. So it is not the same thing. The QUIC protocol is used primarily for video streaming but may be adopted by IETF as part of the move to HTTPv3. The mix of TCP and QUIC is described in the Enea insight article https://www.enea.com/insights/tcp-vs-udp-the-fight-for-space-on-a-shared-network/ove to HTTPv3.
TCP acceleration is the process of modifying the TCP transmission window (number of packets) to be more or less aggressive depending on the available physical bandwidth. In the initial phase (when first a peer to peer connection is made) also called ‘Slow Start’ the window size can be increased more for 4G & 5G networks. In 5G networks it can be increased more than 4G. This allows more data to be transmitted initially.
During the life of the connection the window and packets loss govern how much data can be transmitted reliably. In the case of 5G this can be a significant difference. However if it is too aggressive then a large number of lost packets is communicated (as the network can’t cope) which can cause a significant back-off / ramp down of available packets. The principle is to match the estimation of the physical bandwidth to number of packets (and size of packet) [window size] always ensuring the TCP connection is ‘Optimal’
TCP acceleration can decrease load time of web pages / files (enabling a mobile data supplier to be #1 network in a drive test) and also improve the customer’s network perception of speed. In respect of operations automatic TCP acceleration always ensures that the mobile network is transporting over half the data optimally – maximizing the use of available bandwidth.
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TCP Accelerator Datasheet
Next-gen acceleration to maximize the efficiency of transport layer
