DIRECPC® IMPLEMENTS SYSTEM-WIDE NETWORK ENHANCEMENTS
TO ADDRESS RECORD SUBSCRIBER GROWTH (03/08/99)
DirecPC, the award-winning high-speed Internet service from Hughes
Network Systems, today announced a sweeping set of network
enhancements -- including the addition of further capacity on the
Hughes-owned Galaxy III-R satellite -- to address the escalating
growth it has experienced in recent months.
In addition to the increased space segment capacity, HNS is
instituting a wide range of network improvements that should further
optimize services for new and existing DirecPC customers. These
include:
Caching frequently accessed Web sites at the DirecPC
Network Operations Center (NOC). By delivering content from
a predictive caching environment, rather than retrieving it from
the Web, significant increases in delivery speed can be
achieved.
Distributing a new, enhanced version of the DirecPC client
software (version 2.01) which, among other things, optimizes
CPU usage at the DirecPC client.
Enhancing the robustness of the DirecPC Turbo Newscast
service. Turbo Newscast allows DirecPC customers to have
the latest content from their favorite Usenet newsgroups - up
to 512K per article -automatically broadcast to their PC hard
drive by satellite.
Ongoing NOC enhancements to speed the delivery of URL
requests to - and the retrieval of content from - the Internet.
Announcing these changes, Vice President of DirecPC Services
Dave Zatloukal said, "The subscriber growth we've experienced over
the last year has been nothing short of remarkable. As
bandwidth-hungry Internet users realize that DirecPC is still the only
high-speed Internet access service available nationwide, we expect
this pattern to continue, if not accelerate, through the remainder of
1999. By implementing this system-wide network upgrade, we have
laid the groundwork for DirecPC to continue to offer incredibly fast
Internet access speeds well into the new millenium."
DirecPC General Manager Paul Gaske added, "The speed with
which we were able to adapt to our recent growth is further testimony
to the flexibility of the DirecPC satellite broadband platform. In
contrast to terrestrial high-bandwidth services like cable modems or
XDSL, we were able to effect a major nationwide infrastructure
upgrade - including the addition of more satellite capacity - in
extremely short order."
HNS also announced that it would be distributing free PCI-format
hardware upgrades, along with the new DirecPC 2.01 client software,
to the small number of subscribers still using older software with the
ISA format DirecPC satellite modem. This hardware/software
conversion will allow DirecPC to increase the bandwidth broadcast to
these customers, thereby enabling greater speed to their desktops.
The free upgrade will begin in April and is expected to be complete
by July.
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