Stampede Technologies recently added software to its stable of acceleration products that the company promises will optimize Web traffic for enterprise IT managers.

WebRider is packaged on an appliance that would be installed behind a corporate firewall and in front of a Web server farm. The appliance is built on a 64-bit-processor Linux box and uses technologies such as content-aware caching and bi-directional compression to speed Web application traffic over corporate WANs to remote and branch-office locations.

"We built a system that can relieve the pain points of Web-based applications. And our customers can mix and match if they want the advanced features or just the traffic optimization," says Tom Yohe, vice president of engineering and co-founder.

WebRider can optimize HTTP and HTTPS traffic by compressing both static and dynamic HTML and XML content, including attachments. The product also performs SSL termination, which offloads encryption tasks from the application server.

Stampede offers a plug-in that can perform SSL termination on browsers, which further speeds SSL traffic. The plug-in also enables “cache differencing,” in which the WebRider server maintains a copy of the browser cache and sends only the differences back to the browser when the content is changed.

Other features include Web application cookie compression and content-aware caching, which eliminates round trips to the enterprise application server to validate data. The appliance will also automatically update itself via the Web.

Stampede says its WebRider appliance competes with similar products from FineGround and Redline Networks.

Available now, WebRider pricing ranges between $35,000 and $50,000, depending on network configuration. The WebRider Browser Plug-In is sold separately and costs $35 per client.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.