abednarz
Executive Editor

A new year for WAN optimization

Opinion
Jan 17, 20083 mins

* Endace, Packeteer and Stampede are among vendors with news to share

With the new year comes a new crop of announcements from network optimization players. Here’s a quick roundup of recent product launches, market forecasts and partnership announcements helping shape the industry.

* Stampede makes satellite connectionSatellite networks can provide the most remote of the mobile population with Web access, and a new deal between Stampede Technologies (which specializes in client-side acceleration) and iDirect Technologies is aimed at bringing acceleration capabilities to that same crowd. Stampede inked an agreement with iDirect to offer Stampede’s application acceleration products to satellite service providers to improve response times and reduce bandwidth utilization across their networks. (iDirect designs and develops satellite-based broadband communications technology.) “Satellite networks are increasingly used to support critical business applications that place heavy bandwidth demands on IP networks,” said Ajit Vanniamparampil, iDirect’s product manager, in a statement. “With space segment becoming scare and expensive, our customers need to maximize their bandwidth efficiencies and improve application response times.”* IDC sees big growth for WAN application delivery marketResearch firm IDC released its worldwide market forecast for the WAN application delivery market (measured by manufacturing revenue) and analyzed key trends behind the market’s strong growth. According to Tracy Corbo, a senior analyst for network and service management at IDC, “the WAN application delivery market is growing as it becomes a must-have for network managers. The ability to provide cost savings as well as provide enhanced application performance will drive revenue to $1.1 billion by 2012.” To purchase IDC’s WAN application delivery forecast, check out the firm’s Web site. * Packeteer teams up with CaviumPacketeer announced plans to use Cavium Networks’ Octeon multicore MIPS64 processors in its WAN application delivery products. The semiconductor maker’s high-throughput processing technology will let Packeteer increase the performance of its compression, encryption and processing offloading technologies — and enable its products to reach network traffic throughput speeds of up to 20Gbps, Packeteer said. The first release Packeteer plans as part of the collaboration with Cavium is its forthcoming “Turbo” product architecture, which is designed to boost the capacity of Packeteer’s existing high-end PacketShaper 10000 product. (Stay tuned for more news about Turbo.)* Endace unveils central management serverEndace of Auckland, New Zealand, launched the Ninja Central Management Server (CMS), which lets companies centrally manage hundreds of NinjaProbe network traffic-monitoring appliances through a browser-based console. Administrators can use CMS to issue group configuration commands, remotely activate licenses and initiate system upgrades, for example. For security, Ninja CMS supports Radius AAA or TACACS+ user authentication, and SSH encrypted communication channels are used between the CMS and NinjaProbes, the vendor says.

abednarz

Ann Bednarz is the executive editor of Network World. Ann is a longtime IT journalist and has spent 26 years writing and editing for Network World, where she has worked as a news reporter, managed product testing and reviews, and developed features and how-to articles for an audience of network professionals and data center managers. Over the last two years, she has conceived and edited award-winning content for Network World that includes 2025 Jesse H. Neal Award finalists, 2025 Azbee Award regional winners and national finalists, and 2024 Eddie & Ozzie Award finalists.

Ann holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture and spent the early part of her journalism career writing about architectural design and construction. In her free time, she keeps those skills alive through DIY projects.

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