For the second consecutive year, leading vendors in the application delivery arena are squaring off with their solution in the “Application Delivery Challenge,” a project jointly produced by Robin Layland of Layland Consulting and Webtorials. In the challenge, which is part of a series on a variety of topics, Robin begins by introducing the area of technology and presenting “the challenge.” Each vendor then responds with their solution. This year, the participating vendors are Foundry Networks, Cisco, Juniper and Citrix.

The Challenge’s subtitle, “Solutions for the Data Center,” emphasizes that these solutions are primarily intended for “asymmetrical” deployment in the data center as opposed to “symmetrical” deployment both at the central site and the branch site. (This second class of appliances is addressed separately in an “Application Acceleration Challenge.)

Nomenclature for these devices remains a conundrum both due to their multifunctional characteristics and due to the fact that most products evolved from an earlier point solution. As Robin points out in the introduction, “This networking solution for the data center goes by many names: Application Switch, Application Delivery Controller (ADC) or Application Front End (AFE). It’s the next evolution of Server Load Balancers or Layer 4-7 switches. While we have not decided on a name, and we didn’t even settle on one in the past, let’s call it an ‘application switch’ since it is one less word. Regardless, it plays a critical role in the network.”

He continues by explaining that the application switch “sits in front of our servers and appliances. There are Web servers, client/server application servers, presentation servers, database servers, DNS servers, RAS servers and the list goes on. Appliances have also wildly propagated. It is getting rare to have only one appliance for a function. Security appliances are plentiful enough to create their own farm with multiple firewalls, IPSs and other new security appliances constantly being added. Install the wrong application switch and your network and you will suffer.”

In the next newsletter, we will look further at what the applications switches are expected to do and what the participants in the challenge were give as “ground rules.” In the meantime, the written responses to the challenge are available at Webtorials.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.