Each Nomad unit comes pre-installed with Greenstar's accelerator software, which provides speed enhancements of 200-500% over normal wireless circuits.

Standard wireless circuits (analog or digital celphones, and satellite phones) are not designed for data transmission, which requires steady, consistent-speed, high-quality connections. The nature of TCP/IP (the protocol used for the Internet) actually makes this problem worse, since this protocol tends to operate with bursts of activity and silence, and requires full re-transmission of data blocks if errors are detected.

The result is that wireless data connections, even in the best of spectrum conditions, are limited to 9600 baud or less, and in many cases fall to less than 300 baud, with constant dropped connections.

Greenstar's software overcomes these limitations with a secure server relay system, that creates a buffer to smooth out the inconsistent data activity of wireless communications and TCP/IP. Depending on the type of activity, the acceleration seen may be double the data rate (for Web browsing) or as much as five times the data rate (for FTP file transfers, and batch email sessions).

Data rates of near 28K baud (the base rate for a standard wired telephone) have been achieved under field conditions in remote sites, via the Globalstar satellite system.

There is a nominal fee of $3.95 per month for this service; the first year of acceleration service is included in the base price of the Greenstar Nomad.