F5 Networks to tackle file-sharing WAN optimization

By Matt Hamblen, Computerworld
February 22, 2006 07:08 PM ET

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F5 Networks on Monday plans to announce an upgrade to its WAN optimization appliance, moving into a hot market to offer file-sharing acceleration for Common Internet File Systems.

Seattle-based F5's decision to include CIFS acceleration means that latency in transferring Windows-based files globally could be vastly reduced, tripling or quadrupling transfer speeds, said Ameet Dhillon, F5's director of product management.

In addition to CIFS acceleration, the upcoming WANJet 4.0 appliance will offer about double the scalability of earlier WANJet versions, along with improved reporting capabilities and user interface integration with other F5 products, Dhillon said.

Analysts said the F5 appliance will join a growing set of products that can be used to replace file servers in branch offices around the globe, helping companies that are now looking for ways to back up growing amounts of data for regulatory compliance purposes.

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Will Lee, director of operations at Navio Systems, a digital rights management vendor in Cupertino, Calif., has been beta-testing the 4.0 version and will deploy the software on two appliances in the next 45 days to support global operations in Europe and Asia, he said. The WANJet 4.0 appliances may also be used to replace conventional file servers at various global locations.

Navio has been an F5 customer for three years and currently uses the WANJet 3.0 for large data backups in the San Franciso area across a dedicated T1 line. When the 3.0 appliance was rolled out, backup times were reduced from three days to five hours, Lee said. Adding CIFS acceleration is expected to improve speed on global connections, he said.

"By going from three days down to five hours to transfer a 40GB data set, we didn't have to increase network capacity," Lee said. Navio actually saved money by not buying extra WAN links, since the WANJet appliance cost $20,000 and paid for itself in six months, he said.

Two analysts said WANJet 4.0 works by recognizing a CIFS file and drastically reducing the number of transactions needed to make a transfer. "CIFS is an incredibly chatty protocol," said Joe Skorupa, an analyst at Gartner.

Skorupa and Joe Conover, an analyst at Current Analysis, said there can be hundreds of back-and-forth transactions across a network in CIFS, which may only take 1 millisecond each in a LAN but could take 200 milliseconds over a WAN.

The need to comply with new federal regulations and back up data globally is helping drive the need for WAN optimization products, both analysts said. Skorupa said that after the Internet bubble burst in 2000, remote systems administrators were transferred or laid off and backup operations were centralized or not done at all until regulations forced them to resume.

"You basically had no reliable backup for five years, until Sarbanes-Oxley came along," Skorupa said. "The office manager has taken the backup tapes home and put them on the mantle."

The WANJet 4.0 release represents the first time F5 has fully incorporated technology from Swan Labs, which F5 acquired last September, Dhillon said.

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