FastSoft Inc., a start-up venture that develops products that accelerate the transfer of data over the Internet, today announced the launch of its commercial operations and the opening of its new corporate headquarters in Monrovia, California, northeast of Los Angeles. FastSoft's patent-pending FastTCP technology was developed using research undertaken at the California Institute of Technology's networking laboratory (Netlab), and is designed for use by organizations that need to distribute large amounts of data to any location, worldwide over the Internet. For more information, please visit its Web site. The company, whose product is now in beta testing, has also rounded out its management team, which includes Steven Low, Ph.D. (Founder & CEO), Roger Baar, Ph.D. (Chief Operating Officer and EVP of Sales), Sue LaChance (VP of Product and Market Development), Cheng Jin, Ph.D. (Founder & VP of Engineering), and Bartek Wydrowski, Ph.D. (Principal Software Engineer). FastTCP technology has been used by international teams of scientists to set world records in data transfer over the Internet for the past three years, and at the SuperComputing 2005 Bandwidth Challenge (an independent evaluation of high-speed Internet tools) they smashed the network speed record by moving data at an average rate of 101 gigabits per second. In practical terms, that means that users could transmit a feature-length movie in one half second -- or send the entire contents of the Library of Congress in less than 15 minutes. "We're excited to have the opportunity to bring this technology to market. Sluggish Internet connections have a profound effect on an organization's efficiency -- and the bottom line," according to Low. "We enable smooth, full-throttle connections for sending any file of any size, making it an ideal solution in a wide range of industries, from architecture to entertainment to software development." Through its Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), Caltech has been active in the formation of technology start-up companies wholly or partly based on technology developed at the Caltech campus and its operating division, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Caltech has received equity in more than 90 companies since OTT was founded in 1996. OTT assists Caltech's faculty with intellectual property, evaluates inventions, manages the Caltech campus/JPL patent portfolio, negotiates technology licenses and assists entrepreneurs with the creation of startups. Frederic Farina, Assistant Vice President Office of Technology Transfer at the California Institute of Technology, said, "We are always thrilled when technologies developed in our labs make their way to the marketplace in the form of new products and services for the benefit of society at large." The formation of technology start-ups such as FastSoft based on technologies developed at universities has its roots in the Bayh-Dole Act, bipartisan legislation passed in 1980 to encourage American universities to collaborate with private industry to develop and market technologies developed with federal funding. Since the passage of the act, the number of patents issued to universities has risen from fewer than 250 to more than 2000 annually.