Network acceleration and optimization becoming critical to business success.

Aesop’s tale of the tortoise and the hare is meant to illustrate that the race does not always go to the swift. When it comes to network performance, however, the fable doesn’t quite reach the winner’s circle. That is an area in which speed and success are indisputably linked.

The correlation between network performance and business performance just keeps getting stronger. As business trends such as the dynamic perimeter, virtual enterprises and deployment of content-rich and collaborative applications gain broader acceptance, organizations are recognizing the strategic value of application acceleration and network optimization technologies that speed response times for Web-based or desktop applications.

Application response time is particularly critical given the continued trend toward data center consolidation. Many organizations are consolidating applications and data into centralized data centers, relying upon WANs to connect users and systems across locations. But increasingly complex applications and growing file sizes have increased network congestion and caused serious performance issues — particularly on far-flung WAN links. Increased latency and poor application response times threaten branch office and remote worker productivity.

Under Pressure

At the same time, the growing popularity of the Web 2.0 world — including Web-based communities and social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube — are dramatically resetting user expectations for Web applications. The pressure to deliver a great experience for Web application users has never been greater.

“We recognize trends in rich Web applications growing in complexity and cost, and as the Web expands and users begin engaging these rich services for more time each day, we don’t see it getting easier anytime soon,” said Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane, an AOL company.

To ensure that applications are delivered consistently and predictably to remote workers, more and more organizations are implementing solutions that accelerate the performance of any TCP-based application across the WAN. These optimization and acceleration technologies help organizations improve data throughput, application response and backup times, and enable the consolidation of the branch office server, storage and backup infrastructure for easier management and lower cost.

There are multiple approaches to improving application response time. Three that are currently in vogue are application acceleration, WAN optimization and wide area file services (WAFS). Each of these technologies attacks WAN limitations, but from very different perspectives. Application acceleration relies on algorithms to improve application performance over IP networks, while WAFS is oriented toward saving storage and server space, and WAN optimization focuses on tweaking protocols on the network.

Data center application acceleration platforms load-balance incoming requests and offload the repetitive, CPU-intensive tasks typically performed by servers, enabling the servers to perform much more efficiently. They assess bandwidth usage and enforce policies to block certain applications or outline user-based restrictions.

WAFS uses dedicated devices attached to the central storage network and linked over the WAN to edge appliances at each branch office. The edge devices act as gateways, optimizing and accelerating communications to provide LAN-like speeds over wide-area links. The central server, however, maintains responsibility for all permissions, access controls, data integrity, file management and data protection for the remote locations.

While WAFS uses a file-oriented approach, WAN optimization appliances work at the packet level by compressing data streams, monitoring traffic flows, prioritizing network traffic and managing applications from a protocol perspective. Generally deployed in pairs at both ends of WAN connections, optimization appliances decrease the number of bits crossing the WAN and improve response time for transactions.

Complete Package

Optimization appliances enable data to travel faster. Generally deployed in pairs at both ends of WAN connections, they use a variety of technologies such as compression, caching, application acceleration and TCP optimization to decrease the number of bits crossing the WAN and improve response time for transactions. This can result in better performance and cost savings by making wide-area circuits act as if they have more bandwidth than customers are paying for.

A compression device recognizes repeated traffic patterns, such as those associated with often-requested files, and stores them in main memory to be referenced and accessed locally instead of having to travel over the WAN each time. Caching also reduces WAN traffic. A cache sits between the server and desktop and stores data, such as previously viewed Web pages or applications accessed by several users. When that content is requested, the cache — not the server — pushes it to the browser.

Disk-based data reduction is among the latest technologies designed to create a leaner and meaner WAN experience. The premise is simple: less traffic means fewer traffic jams. Using traffic pattern recognition and local data caching, data reduction technology can reduce WAN traffic by up to 80 percent. That frees up WAN pipes for other streams of traffic.

Slow and steady may have won the race in Aesop’s fable, but that moral doesn’t apply to network performance. Poorly performing applications negatively impact productivity, customer service and the bottom line. With application acceleration and network optimization solutions, however, organizations can maximize their existing bandwidth to control costs, enable data center consolidation and provide consistent and predictable application performance across far-flung networks. That combination of benefits is hard to beat.

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