F5 Networks wants to help customers understand how technology can optimize the performance of Web applications, so the company is hosting an online resource designed to let customers test compression, acceleration and caching technologies for free.

The F5 Application Optimization Resource Portal provides visitors with a repeatable set of tests that display how the technologies available in F5's Big-IP product line can improve performance. The site also includes capabilities to compare application performance and speeds against real-world performance metrics, application-specific deployment guides, and tools to help analyze cost savings, F5 says.

"Customers can run their own sites through the portal's compression calculator, and it can simulate performance from anywhere they are logging in," says Erik Giesa, vice president of product management at F5. "We created these repeatable tests and publicly available tools to help customers see the benefits and cost savings they could realize."

The site utilizes the Gomez Performance Network, a third-party tool for analyzing application performance under real-world conditions, F5 says.

F5 says it plans to add more resources online such as tools to measure latency improvements, analyze what type of traffic is flowing over networks, and test the benefits of using TCP acceleration, compression and caching technologies.

While the free online resource could be seen as a ploy for F5 to get more customers, Giesa says the company hopes visitors will see it as an educational tool at their disposal.

"We've seen research that shows more than over 85% of systems out there aren’t using these types of technologies to lower their costs and improve their performance," he says. "This portal isn't operating in a vendor lab, it's real-world scenarios in which customers can calculate their performance."

The portal is here.

More information on the Gomez Performance Network can be found at http://www.gomez.com/

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.