WAN optimization start-up Silver Peak Systems has rolled out hardware aimed at speeding application and file-transfer performance between remote sites and a central data center.

Silver Peak's technology uses a method of traffic pattern recognition and local data caching to accelerate WAN traffic. The company says this technique can speed performance of all types of WAN traffic, instead of just certain applications or protocols.

The company says its NX line of appliances run software that can accelerate the performance of WAN traffic by caching the bit patterns of WAN traffic - regardless of application protocol or file type - and then caching those patterns in local storage. When the appliance recognizes patterns it already has "memorized" it delivers the bit patterns locally, freeing up WAN pipes for other streams of traffic.

Silver Peak boxes need to be deployed in a corporate data center and at each remote site for the system to work. Boxes at each site communicate with the central device so that each box knows what data is cached, says Craig Stouffer, vice president of marketing for Silver Peak. Because only new data is pushed down, this can reduce WAN bandwidth by as much as 80%, he adds.

Silver Peak's technology differs from WAN TCP/IP compression appliances or wide area file services (WAFS) products, in that it caches binary bit patterns of WAN traffic. This lets the devices recognize and provide local cache access for any type of packet sent over a WAN, whereas TCP/IP acceleration is limited to applications running that protocol, and WAFS gear only accelerates access to certain file types, Stouffer says.

The Silver Peak products will compete with other WAN optimization gear from vendors such as Expand, Packeteer, Peribit (acquired by Juniper in April), FineGround (bought by Cisco in May ) and Stratacache.

The devices come in three models: the NX-2500, NX-3500 and NX-7500, which provide 2M, 10M and 155M bit/sec of throughput, respectively. Each box includes four 10/100/1000M bit/sec Ethernet ports. Local caching capabilities range from 250G to 2T bytes of storage. The boxes also provide traffic encryption with Advanced Encryption Standard and IPSec VPN traffic encryption. The NX-2500 and the NX-3500, which are intended for small and midsize branches, cost $10,000 and $18,000, respectively. The NX-7500, which is deployed in corporate data centers, costs $50,000.