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Start-up eyes WAN optimization
By Denise Dubie
Silver Peak Systems says it has a better way to transfer data over wide area links. The premise is that it doesn't transfer the data as often as it's requested or in its complete form.
It's not a new concept to reduce the amount of
packets, bytes, files and traffic that traverse
corporate WANs to optimize performance - http://www.networkworld.com/nlnetop7160 , but start-up Silver Peak believes it is achieving
the end goal of reduced congestion and latency
on the WAN in a unique way. The Mountain View,
Calif., company, which raised some $12.5 million
in venture funding, this week will begin shipping
its flagship product suite.
Silver Peak's Network Memory employs technology that the company dubs local instance networking, in which the appliance watches traffic and recognizes patterns. The product comprises appliances loaded with software and installed at either end of a WAN link - for example, in a data center and at branch offices.
When the data center appliance sees a pattern of bytes that it remembers already sending over the WAN, it will only send a reference to the branch office box, letting it know the box already has all or parts of the content and telling it to forward the content on to the requesting end user.
The data center appliance can be used to optimize
traffic at either Layer 2 or Layer 3, sitting behind
the router or peering with it - http://www.networkworld.com/nlnetop7161 , and the branch appliance sits behind the router.
The appliances are unaware if the packets they
are passing along contain e-mail or a PowerPoint
presentation; they just identify that a particular
sequence of data has been repeated and does not
need to be sent over WAN links again. Company officials
say that, unlike some application acceleration
tools, Network Memory can optimize any type of
traffic, including TCP, UDP and more.
"We are not simply a TCP proxy or TCP-only; we can optimize proprietary applications, streaming traffic and UDP," says Craig Stouffer, vice president of worldwide marketing. The appliances are also loaded with storage, up to 2 terabytes in the data center and less for local appliances, to provide customers with adequate memory for weeks and potentially years depending on the content, the company says.
With its dual-box architecture, Silver Peak will
compete with the likes of Peribit (which has been
acquired by Juniper - http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/0426junibuy.html?rl )
and Riverbed, but company officials say the product
would be complementary to tools from the likes
of NetScaler (recently acquired by Citrix - http://www.networkworld.com/nlnetop4677 ),
F5 Networks and Redline Networks (also acquired by Juniper), which can help customers reduce the number of servers needed in a data center to speed Web application traffic over the WAN.
Available now, the Silver Peak Network Memory appliances come in three flavors: the NX-2500, a 1U appliance for branch offices that costs about $10,000; the NX-3500, a 2U appliance for regional hubs and small data centers that costs about $18,000; and the NX-7500 for large data centers that costs about $50,000.
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