Tell Us What You Think of Packeteer’s PacketShaper and iShaper

This week it is Packeteer’s customers’ turn to describe their experiences with the Packetshaper and iShaper distributed application delivery system (DADS) products. This is the last chance for the world to hear about your experiences with Packeteer-branded products, because Blue Coat is set to acquire Packeteer any day now. We know that there are a lot of Packeteer customers out there--more than 10,000 of you according to official sources--and we hope to hear from many of you.

Founded in 1996, Packeteer pioneered technology to identify different WAN traffic packet types and apply QoS techniques to shape traffic and make critical applications perform better. Both the venerable PacketShaper and the newer iShaper (added to the Packeteer product portfolio with the acquisition of Tacit Networks in 2006) apply control and acceleration technologies to optimize the performance of networked applications. The PacketShaper provides traffic shaping, compression, TCP and HTTP acceleration, analysis, reporting capabilities. The iShaper combines the original Tacit solution that included wide area file services (WAFS) and TCP acceleration, optimization, compression and caching, with the PacketShaper capabilities.

In Packeteer’s own words, it offers “an intelligent, unified and adaptive approach to monitor, shape, and optimize applications, delivering the best user experience for any application to any location.” Compared to rival distributed ADS solutions, Packeteer is very strong in performance analysis and reporting. According to Blue Coat’s Vice President of Product Marketing, Carrie Oakes, this strength is what attracted Blue Coat to Packeteer. Oakes told us at Interop that Blue Coat is buying Packeteer for the visibility it provides into traffic behavior and management. Blue Coat aims to integrate Packeteer features into its ProxySG line of appliances.

If you have deployed a Packeteer PacketShaper or iShaper solution, tell us what you think. Does it live up to your expectations? What were your impressions? A simple "I like it", "I have mixed feelings", or "I hate it" response is fine--but if you have insight to share with the community, then talk all you want. You can post a reply to this blog using your name or anonymously.

If you are using another vendor's product, your turn will come in a future blog.