Network performance can be a troubling and mysterious burden placed on the shoulders of IT administrators. When seeking information, there are conflicting reports about what is and isn’t necessary for optimal performance.
As Joel Snyder put it in Busting Myths About WAN Optimization, “recently, wide area network optimization technology has come off the back burner, as network managers seek to improve the end-user application experience in branch offices, support cloud initiatives and gain visibility into how IT resources are being used or misused.”
Joel goes on to clarify the goal of WAN optimization and what it can provide for an organization.
The overriding goal of WAN optimization is to maximize the efficiency of data transfer across the network. Today’s products accomplish this by using techniques to achieve performance, visibility and control.
WAN optimization technologies squeeze more out of WAN links and achieve better performance by caching data and compensating for TCP/IP design and implementation flaws. Visibility provides network managers with information about how WANs are being used, focusing on users and individual applications (not just IP addresses and TCP port numbers). This helps in planning, debugging, troubleshooting and — where necessary — policing. Finally, WAN optimization tools enable network managers to allocate bandwidth and prioritize traffic to critical business applications, holding back ultra-chatty background traffic and nonbusiness tools such as social networking.
In the article, Joel “myth-busts” the following:
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Fact or Fallacy? WAN optimization is all about compression and caching.
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Fact or Fallacy? WAN optimization doesn’t help with public cloud applications.
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Fact or Fallacy? WAN optimization doesn’t help uncompressible traffic, such as voice/video or encrypted enterprise applications.
As with any technology, WAN optimization has evolved from a nice to have to a necessary tool for IT departments. “WAN optimization is more than just caching and compressing now…with all of the cloud applications it’s more along the lines of traffic shaping and intelligent load balancing,” said Bob Rivers, Senior Account Executive at Ecessa.
WAN optimization improves the performance of all applications within a network. Joel explains, “WAN optimization tools can deliver better video conferencing and Voice over IP services to remote users. In cases where real-time traffic has been packaged into TCP, rather than in the more appropriate UDP, protocol optimization can smooth delivery of streams.” When network performance is critical to an organization, the adoption of WAN optimization tools and techniques can provide a business the edge it needs to keep up with competitors and the growing demands of customers.
Enhance the power of your network with internet failover, link aggregation, load balancing and WAN optimization tools from Ecessa.
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