WAN-acceleration boxes tout 40% better transfer times

Optical Networking This newsletter is sponsored by Xirrus Compare Wireless Products with Network World's Buyer's Guide From wireless adapters to WiMax repeaters, Network World has detailed information on hundreds of wireless products. Side-by-side product comparisons in 10 specific wireless categories along with objective test and review results make it quick and easy to find the solutions that are right for your enterprise. Network World's Optical Networking Newsletter, 06/06/07 WAN-acceleration boxes tout 40% better transfer times By Tim Greene Silver Peak is announcing new software that cuts the time for WAN data transfers by about 40% below the reduction capability of its previous software version. The upgrades in the company’s Silver Peak 2.0 software are designed to have the most impact on traffic-transfer times across high-bandwidth connections where latency problems can affect TCP rates so severely that the pipes never get filled. Two key adjustments account for the improved times. First, with the new software, Silver Peak has adjusted its algorithms that help improve how well its WAN-optimization appliances recognize patterns within traffic streams. The patterns are stored locally, so they don’t have to be sent in their entirety the next time the same pattern needs to be sent. Instead, Silver Peak appliances send a pointer to the patterns, reducing the amount of data clogging WAN connections, the company says. Network World LAN/WAN Buyer's Guide Find the right LAN/WAN products for your enterprise - fast. Our extensive database of detailed product information will help you quickly pinpoint what you need. With the side-by-side comparison tool you can evaluate product features and make the best decision for your enterprise. Click here to go to the Buyer's Guide now. In addition, the new software enables the appliances to store and retrieve these patterns more quickly to and from local disks, further reducing delay by improving the I/O subsystems used to transfer repetitive data patterns to and from the disks on which they are cached. These two changes in the software improve data-transfer times by 30% to 50%. So a transfer that took 10 hours before would take six hours or so, the company says. Silver Peak devices perform pattern-recognition at the byte level, unlike some other vendors’ gear that sample blocks of traffic of a certain length looking for identical matches. Silver Peak says this enables its gear to abbreviate real-time traffic, such as video, because it can separate identical content from the varying time stamp attached to each packet. Without this capability, it could not effectively reduce video. Among others, Silver Peak competes against Cisco, Juniper and Riverbed. Silver Peak also is introducing new management features that include the ability to create templates for configuring the company's NX line of WAN-acceleration appliances. These templates can be pushed to multiple machines. Before, each machine had to be configured individually. The new software also includes zero-touch configuration in which the devices are given the IP address of the management server and connect to it automatically to download configurations. This reduces errors resulting from having to manually configure devices. The management software now supports more means for identifying more specifically how traffic types are optimized, which results in traffic being delivered more efficiently. For instance, before the devices could apply different optimizations to different applications. That has been expanded to apply different optimizations to traffic identified by application, source or destination IP addresses and ports.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

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Contact the author: Tim Greene is a senior editor at Network World, covering network access control, virtual private networking gear, remote access, WAN acceleration and aspects of VoIP technology. You can reach him at tgreene@nww.com. This newsletter is sponsored by Xirrus Compare Wireless Products with Network World's Buyer's Guide From wireless adapters to WiMax repeaters, Network World has detailed information on hundreds of wireless products. Side-by-side product comparisons in 10 specific wireless categories along with objective test and review results make it quick and easy to find the solutions that are right for your enterprise. ARCHIVE Archive of the Optical Networking Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007