A quick rundown of e-mail acceleration and caching

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
07/28/05
Today's focus: A quick rundown of e-mail acceleration and
caching

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* A suggestion to address the e-mail problems of remote users
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
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YOU HAVE THAT ON YOUR HOME NETWORK?

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proliferation of networked storage drives, media players and
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Today's focus: A quick rundown of e-mail acceleration and
caching

By Mike Karp

Last time, we raised the issue of the of e-mail problems for
remote office users. Today, one approach to a solution.

One new technology that's gaining acceptance is the idea of
e-mail acceleration and caching. This technique places a caching
appliance at the central IT facility and typically smaller
versions of the appliance at each remote site. The strategy
here is to store attachments at the main site, sending them
across the WAN only when they are really needed. When that
occurs files go out over the WAN in compressed format using a
WAN-optimized protocol. The attachments are then cached at the
branch office on a small appliance. Whenever an attachment is
sent to multiple recipients at the office, it only crosses the
WAN once; local redundant copies will be served out of the local
caching appliance.

The appliances maintain their own file systems, and set pointers
between e-mail messages and their attachments (now however, the
pointers reference the cached copies of attachments, allowing
multiple e-mails to share an attachment). As a result,
organizations keep e-mail servers consolidated at the datacenter
where they can be managed most effectively; remote users get the
performance of a local mail server, and bandwidth requirements
are minimized.

Today, when a user at a remote office receives a 10M-byte
PowerPoint file from headquarters and then decides to forward
the attachment to 10 members of his team, the original file is
sent back to the datacenter and assigned to each team member's
mailbox. Each recipient now has a discreet copy of the file,
and each copy must be accessed over the WAN. The result of this
sending and forwarding is that the original 10M-byte file has
now taken up 120M bytes of bandwidth (10M bytes for the original
user to receive it, another 10M bytes to send it back to the
data center, and then 10M bytes for each of the 10 team members
to retrieve it again). Ask yourself how many times each day this
happens in your company.

Let's look at how a caching solution might improve things (I
built this example using Tacit Networks' Ishared Exchange
<http://www.tacitnetworks.com/> ).

With local caching, things are quite different. When the remote
office user first clicks on the icon to open the original
10M-byte file, it has already been significantly compressed -
perhaps to below 3M bytes - and has been sent over the WAN via a
WAN optimized protocol. Performance is significantly improved
already. More significantly, when the file is forwarded to the
10 team-members, the original copy no longer moves across the
WAN. Instead, the forwarding message points to the copy of the
presentation that is stored in the cache.

The result of this is that when each of the 10 members clicks on
the file icon in the message, it is opened and pulled from the
local cache. In the end, the original 10M-byte file actually
takes only 3M bytes of bandwidth for both the initial
transmission and for the forwarding to the rest of the team. The
original 10M-bytes was compressed and sent to Fred, then each of
the other recipients read the attachment from the local cache.

The result: after the first send there is no further WAN
involvement, everyone gets performance from a local server, the
bandwidth used is a fraction of what traditional methods would
have needed.

Next week, more on e-mail.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. 2005 Salary Survey
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage4039>

2. Cisco nixes conference session on hacking IOS router code
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage4040>

3. Verizon joins managed security game
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage3824>

4. Schools battle personal data hacks
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage4041>

5. VoIP security threats: Fact or fiction?
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage3825>

Today's most forwarded story:

The ROI of VoIP
<http://www.networkworld.com/research/2005/071105-voip.html>
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Mike Karp

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the
methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He
has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and
telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Tacit Networks
Network World Executive Guide: Staying Focused on the Moving
Target that is Storage

Keeping pace with evolving storage strategies, architectures,
and trends is not unlike keeping pace with your organizations
underlying capacity needs. From ILM strategies to SAN management
to the threat of those USB memory sticks, this Network World
Executive Guide will help you stay focused on the moving target
that is Storage. Register now and get a free copy of Network
World's Storage Executive Guide.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=108902
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

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Breaking storage news and analysis:
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/storage.html
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE

SIX TIPS FOR GETTING WHAT YOU DESERVE

Before you go in for your next annual review or promotion
interview, you would be wise to consider these tips for ensuring
you've got the right stuff to move ahead. Network executives
offer advice to help you gun for that next promotion and fatten
up your paycheck. Click here:

<http://www.networkworld.com/you/2005/072505-salary-side2.html>
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