XRoads Networks: Small company, big acceleration
EdgePro 5500e units designed for regional hubs, small data centers.
By Barry Nance
,
Network World
, 05/08/2006
- Share/Email
- Tweet This
- Print
Five-year-old XRoads Networks wasn't the youngest vendor in this market, but it is the smallest system we tested. Buying from a small vendor confers its own set of opportunities
and risks. The vendor can be more responsive to your needs, but it might not be able to offer 24/7 support. In XRoads' case,
support was next-business-day, and in our tests we had to leave a voice mail message for a technical support person.
XRoads sent us two EdgePro 5500e units for evaluation. These appliances optimize WAN links via what XRoads calls adaptive TCP tuning, a technique that accelerates TCP sessions by allowing for larger TCP windows
and providing anticipatory TCP acknowledgments.
The devices also use data compression to reduce WAN link traffic, and traffic shaping to prioritize it. The EdgePro 5500e
units can manage VPN failover by connecting to one of several designated alternate addresses, and they can turn up an alternate VPN when a WAN
link fails.
The EdgePro 5500e has an application-filtering feature that relies on the unit's traffic shaping, which identifies traffic
by application (VoIP vs. Citrix, for example).
Additionally, the EdgePro 5500e has a simple network-monitoring capability that, from a traffic-density perspective, can show
the top 10 applications and top 10 users. When connected to multiple alternate-path WAN links, the 5500e load balances among
the multiple links to keep traffic moving smoothly.
The 5500e can perform best path routing (BPR), multi-WAN load balancing and WAN failover to alternate links when primary connections
fail.
Through the use of a blacklist, the appliance can filter application content (we found this helpful in filtering music downloads
in our tests). The system also can perform rudimentary intrusion detection and prevention, act as a firewall and perform network address translation (NAT).
For Oracle application transactions, we saw an average bandwidth-increase factor of 20.5 from the EdgePro 5500e devices. The boxes achieved
an average bandwidth-increase factor of 17.2 for e-mail and Web page traffic, and the units managed a respectable average
bandwidth-increase factor of 3.1 for Citrix and VoIP datastreams.
Partner Content
Simplify Your Branch Infrastructure
Learn how to simplify your branch infrastructure while dramatically increasing app performance with Citrix Branch Repeater.
Download the Free Info Kit
Next-Gen Load Balancing
Free Guide: "Next Gen Load Balancing: 8 Things You Need to Handle Today's Network Traffic" shows you the functionality needed in your next load balancer.
Download the Free Guide
Accelerate Your Web Apps by up to 5x
Free Guide: "The Secret to Getting Maximum Speed from your Web Applications."' Learn how you can deliver Web apps up to 5x faster.
Download the Free Guide
Comments (1)
EdgeProBy Anonymous on March 18, 2009, 11:05 amI tried it, they forced me away from IPsec VPN, I guess they say its not as secure as their Site2Site crap. Also I finally got it all figured out and the gateway...
Reply | Read entire comment
View all comments