- More porn sneaks onto the iPhone
- 'Swatting' case shows need to ban caller-ID spoofing
- Why the iPhone can't be "killed"
- Nortel enterprise chief wants to bring back Bay
- US sets final emergency responder wireless pilot
Imagine walking into the CIO's office tomorrow and saying, "I can cut our WAN consumption by as much as 80 times, speed file transfers as much as 45 times and make our Windows users a whole lot happier." Think you'd get the CIO's attention?
Those aren't just idle claims. Seven months of rigorous testing showed us why application acceleration is such a hot area: These devices really work.
We tested boxes from Blue Coat Systems, Cisco, Riverbed Technology and Silver Peak Systems in a true enterprise context, with a massive test bed pushing data over multiple T-3 and T-1 links (see "How we did it"). After pounding the systems with the most popular enterprise applications, we're inclined to believe the hype.
Even if average speedups are "only" around 5 to 10 times, that's still a big improvement. With 31% of IT budgets eaten up by recurring monthly WAN costs, according to a recent Nemertes Research study, application acceleration promises potentially huge cost savings.
Riverbed's Steelhead appliances outperformed the field in most tests, and won our Clear Choice award.
But all these devices deserve serious consideration: Blue Coat's SG appliances for solid HTTP optimization; Cisco's Wide Area Application System (WAAS) for excellent compression, traffic transparency and interoperability with other devices; and Silver Peak's NX appliances for strong scalability and intuitive traffic reporting tools.
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 (16)
Bake offs a bit premature for some?By Gavin Cooper - D and D Consulting on June 12, 2009, 11:34 amWhile bake offs have their merit I often think that clients adopting wan acceleration / optimization may not fully understand (or be able to measure) the benefits....
Reply | Read entire comment
economy and WAN accelerationBy WAN Acceleration on December 15, 2008, 2:30 amI wonder with the economy having a tough time whether the WAN acceleration market will continue to grow as it has over the past few years. We'll see. Cisco WAAS...
Reply | Read entire comment
RocketStreamBy DivineOracle on November 22, 2008, 3:52 pmCheck these guys out. http://www.rocketstream.com/products/overview/default.aspx They have another product soon: RocketConnect.
Reply | Read entire comment
RocketstreamBy Anonymous on November 22, 2008, 3:49 pmWatch out for Rocketstream and RocketConnect. http://www.rocketstream.com
Reply | Read entire comment
Sizing the Riverbed CacheBy cjn on October 5, 2007, 9:25 amWhile deploying Riverbed appliances, we struggled with determining the appropriate cache sizes as well. In particular, we have sites with 100's of GB of files (in...
Reply | Read entire comment
View all comments