WAN optimization players flocked to the East Coast this week for Interop New York, which wraps up Friday.

Executives from companies including Blue Coat Systems, Cisco, Exinda Networks, Expand Networks, Ipanema Technologies, Packeteer, Riverbed Technology and Strangeloop Networks took part in the conference, sharing insights about emerging technologies and strategies for improving application performance over the wide area.

The exposition floor at Interop New York -- which is about half the size of the flagship Las Vegas version of Interop -- also provided a backdrop for a slew of product unveilings. Here are some of the highlights:

* Riverbed tunes devices for disaster recovery jobs
New software and hardware upgrades from Riverbed are aimed at enterprises that need to replicate large data loads between data centers (as opposed to between a branch office and data center). On the software side, Riverbed unveiled a new version of its RiOS software that includes features tailored for disaster recovery. For example, RiOS 4.1 can analyze the size and type of data to be transferred and tailor its acceleration techniques when it recognizes disaster recovery operations, such as data replication and backup jobs. On the hardware front, Riverbed announced a new Steelhead appliance geared for large-scale data transfers. With a raw capacity of seven terabytes and a three terabyte data store, the Steelhead appliance model 6120 has more than double the storage of previous Steelheads.

* Coyote Point bolsters SMB offerings
Coyote Point Systems unveiled new software for its Equalizer Series load balancing and acceleration appliances, which are designed to appeal in price and user-friendliness to small and midsize businesses, in particular. New features in Equalizer Series V8.0 include: availability improvements such as surge protection for servers and clusters, downed-server alerts, and software diagnosis capabilities; HTTP compression via Coyote Point’s Express HTTP content compression card, which is said to speed downloads fivefold; SSL encryption, offloading and acceleration via the XCEL II SSL accelerator card for Coyote Point’s x50si systems; greater support for Microsoft Outlook Web Access; and improved Web performance management via compatibility with Akamai-powered content distribution networks. The products also feature a revamped GUI, support for fine-grained permissions and new tools for configuring complex routing rules -- all aimed at making it easier for IT administrators to install, configure and maintain Equalizer systems.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.