Just in time for Oracle's OpenWorld conference, Cisco last week unveiled a protocol it developed for running Oracle databases over large server clusters. But Cisco isn't the only vendor looking to help speed up the software maker's applications. In recent weeks F5 Networks and Riverbed Technology also unveiled Oracle-specific features for their respective network optimization wares.

In the Cisco deal, the two vendors worked together to develop Reliable Datagram Sockets, an acceleration protocol designed to scale Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) systems, using InfiniBand technology. Oracle RAC lets enterprises deploy a single 11g database across a cluster of servers (for greater fault tolerance and scalability, for example). But its range is limited to about four servers. Combining Cisco InfiniBand server fabric switches with the RDS interconnect protocol can help accelerate and scale Oracle 11g clusters to 16 servers and beyond, Oracle says.

Also timed with the OpenWorld conference, F5 Networks announced a new version of its Application Ready Network (ARN) portfolio geared for Oracle applications including portal, Fusion middleware, the E-Business suite and PeopleSoft products. F5’s ARN for Oracle provides an application architecture optimized for Oracle’s products as well as best-practice documentation for companies that want to deploy F5’s Big-IP appliances and Oracle products in tandem.

Using application-specific configurations that take advantage of SSL offload, as well as caching and compression capabilities, can result in less wait time for users and reduced hardware costs for enterprises, F5 says. For example, in tests with Oracle, F5 found it could improve login and application speeds as much as threefold, while speeding document download times by as much as 20x. ARN best practices also can reduce Oracle server utilization and slash the number of server-side connections by a factor of 20x, F5 says.

Riverbed Technology, meanwhile, added Oracle 11i optimization to the most recent release of the RiOS operating system software that runs its Steelhead appliances. RiOS 4.1 can apply application-specific protocol optimization techniques to Oracle Forms traffic, which the Oracle E-Business applications generate.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.