Hey Hackers, any guesses as to how these guys work?

>Rapidload works in a way similar to download accelerators: Rapidload intercepts Audio / Video stream that is streamed by the browser and splits the downloaded stream into several parts that are downloaded separately at the same time. Certain sites place limits on bandwidth for single connection, so multiple connections achieve faster streaming rates. So Rapidload doesn't speed up your connection itself, rather it optimizes the streams so that they will more easily reach the users maximum connection speed.

:.:.:

Okay in English:

Rapid load will intercept your youtube connection, and make say 20 different youtube connection, it will start each one a different time code, so from youtube's side it looks like 20 different people watching the same video in 20 different places.

It saves these videos, then plays them back as a single video.

Without even examining the product, several things come to mind:

(1) TCP hacks or tweaks to be more aggressive. Note that this might harm performance on busy links even if it helps on calm ones... lots of trade-offs here. TCP bundling is a form of TCP hack.

(2) Scatter/gather (BitTorrent-like) chunk or bandwidth sharing using centrally managed p2p.

Edit: looks like it's TCP bundling.