Files2u - History and Development of F2U

History and Development of F2U

Files2U has been developed independently by various groups that managed to combine the versatility of FTP, the easy of use of HTTP and the availability of SMTP. The combining of three protocols into one has led to a single protocol that can handle large file transfers in a secure and easy manner. The new generation of F2U protocol supports UDP at the Transport layer as well as TCP. TCP has an inherent quality control mechanism that allows for packet ordering and minor packet loss (up to 2%). This inherent mechanism works well in wired networks but when network conditions are poor such as intercontinental transfers or wireless networks, TCP’s effective throughput is low. UDP on the other hand works well in such network conditions, but doesn’t compensate for actual lost packets. To over come this issue of packet loss, F2U supports forward error correction. This offers a fast protocol with no call back channel where packets can be dropped or rearranged without significant loss to the speed at which data is transferred.