Compaq currently owns 31 percent of the server market. Forrester Research forecasts explosive revenue growth in ISPs, and Compaq's announcement was the first in a series about products designed to help ISPs offer more services to customers. Compaq expects the server to be a platform for future applications such as encryption, electronic commerce, image manipulation, and videoconferencing. The announcement preceded the kickoff of Compaq's Innovate Forum '97, a three-day technology fest for some 5,000 Compaq customers and partners. Both computers were equipped with a 28.8-Kbps modem.
Compute power is measured in floating-point operations per second.
The Food TV Network, for example, usually takes 2.5 minutes to display its home page. The accelerator reduces that to 20 seconds. However, Compaq is quick to point out that not every page will see that kind of speed improvement, since the speed depends on the content. The browser sends a request to, say, NASA's Web site through an ISP that has installed the technology. After the page is received by the ISP, the accelerator steps in to compress the image in near real time.