One of the scientists credited with helping to create the internet has unveiled a new router he says will provide a faster way to deliver video and voice applications online.

The new flow router is the first product of 2004 startup Anagran, the company founded by Lawrence Roberts, once the program manager for the 1960s internet precursor Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET).

Roberts said his new router will be an improvement over traditional network routers, which direct information across networks in bursts of bits of data called packets.

Instead of sending data through smaller packets, Anagran's FR-1000 Intelligent Flow Router attempts to manage information by larger groups of related packets, called flows, and uses a technique to give proper priority to larger flows of information while capping how much of the network's resources they can use.

Goal of seamless delivery

The result is that video, voice and wireless applications are delivered seamlessly, said Roberts.

"Large fixed rate flows like video are not supported well with current-day routers which have freeze-frame, jitter, and general scalability challenges under even the most moderate levels of network congestion," said Roberts in a statement on Monday.

"As the traffic changes, we can’t rely on this last-generation packet technology, which has essentially remained unchanged for 40 years, to power internet performance," said Roberts.

The router, which sells for $70,000 US, will be marketed first to telecommunications companies as an alternative to the routers of industry leaders Cisco Systems Inc. and Juniper Networks, the company said.

The router is smaller and uses 80 per cent less power than competing routers, Roberts said.

Anagran is the second company Roberts has founded to build and distribute flow-based routers.

In 1999 he founded Caspian Networks with a similar mandate but left the company in 2004 to found Anagran. Caspian has since ceased operation.

Along with Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn and Leonard Kleinrock, Roberts helped design and develop ARPANET, considered to be the first internet packet network.