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Reduce Network Traffic with WAN Bandwidth Optimization
Many enterprises use WAN bandwidth optimization in order to cut costs and relieve network congestion. But typical WAN optimization products only reduce network traffic by ten or twenty percent. In contrast, a wide-area data services (WDS) solution can reduce network utilization typically by 60 to 95%.
Data Streamlining provides better bandwidth optimization
Riverbed removes repetitive traffic from your WAN through patent-pending Data Streamlining algorithms. Data Streamlining stores your WAN traffic on disk in a proprietary, application-independent form that can be reused by any application, any file or any user that sends or receives the same data. Whether a client requests a file that has been renamed, emails an attachment or uses another application like FTP or a Web-based application, any traffic that is generated that has been across the network before will not be retransmitted.
Instead, only a small reference to the data is sent to the Riverbed Steelhead appliance on the opposite side of the network. Riverbed's references are 16 bytes in length, yet can represent megabytes of data, which results in high levels of WAN bandwidth optimization.
Riverbed delivers more than just WAN optimization
Unlike WAN optimization products, Riverbed Steelhead appliances deliver much more than reduced network traffic. Riverbed not only provides the best WAN optimization available today, but also improves the throughput of your applications - because it's more than limited network bandwidth that slows down your applications. Most vendors focused on WAN bandwidth optimization do not offer true application acceleration, which are different and distinct challenges. Riverbed leads the pack on both.
MAKE BETTER USE OF CURRENT BANDWIDTH
For many companies, the problems with applications and WANs are described as “bandwidth problems”. While a lack of bandwidth is almost always a factor with a WAN, it isn’t the only factor. Nevertheless, some companies are primarily interested in removing traffic from the WAN in order to avoid a bandwidth upgrade, to reduce their bandwidth provisioning, or to enable other applications (like VoIP or Citrix traffic) to perform better by allocating them more bandwidth.
To reduce the need for more bandwidth, Riverbed’s SDR algorithms store all WAN traffic, in a proprietary form, on disks inside Steelhead appliances on both sides of the WAN link. Thereafter, the Steelhead intercepts any TCP traffic going out across the network, to see if any of that data has been across the network before. If any of it has been sent by any application, then only the new data is sent, along with references to the existing data.
Typically, this approach reduces corporate WAN traffic by 60% to 95% over time; single transactions can easily see compression ratios of 500:1. Obviously, the amount of redundant data that can be removed depends on the repetitiveness of your particular workload. For industries where work is highly collaborative and iterative, Riverbed can significantly improve WAN performance. This is particularly true when large CAD files, PDFs, graphics files, legal contracts, PowerPoint files, large documents and spreadsheets are shared by teams of people who edit and append data to existing files, and then share them again.
AVOID WAN UPGRADES
Many network managers are under pressure to do one or more of the following:
Improve the performance of applications over WANs
Make room for new applications
Make room for more users or more offices
Any of these can trigger a WAN upgrade. If you are about to upgrade your WAN, consider adding Riverbed Steelhead appliances instead. Just as Steelhead appliances can help you get more from your current WAN, they can also help you avoid major and costly WAN upgrades. Steelhead appliances on your WAN links will typically reduce your current WAN traffic by 60% to 75%.
That means that if you currently have an office served by a T1 (1.5 Mbps) you could deliver bandwidth equivalent to between 3 and 30 Mbps just by adding some Steelhead appliances to your WAN link. In many cases, your users will not only have more headroom on your network, they will also experience much better throughput as well. Remember, throughput and bandwidth are not the same thing.
MAKE ROOM FOR VIP AND CITRIX
For some companies, it is a priority to ensure adequate performance for key applications that require a fixed amount of WAN bandwidth per user. Popular examples are Citrix and VoIP, both of which can require about 15 kbps of designated bandwidth per user.
By deploying Steelhead appliances on your WAN, you can reduce the bandwidth consumed by your enterprise traffic, by 60 to 95%, which can make room for other bandwidth-intensive applications. If you have 40 users in a branch office using VOIP, they might require 800 kbps just for VOIP, and perhaps another 750 kbps for other network traffic. If you have a T1 (1.5 Mbps) of bandwidth to that office, then as you add users, you’ll be forced to upgrade that link. With Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances, you might be able to reduce the other data traffic from 750 kbps to 150 kbps, or even less, which lets you expand without adding bandwidth.
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