* WestJet deploys Packeteer appliances to optimize bandwidth and speed application response times
How can you tell if a technology you’ve piloted is worth purchasing? One good indicator is when end users complain when the trial period ends. That’s what happened when Canadian airline WestJet deployed bandwidth management technology in its Calgary, Alberta, data center.
WestJet got its start in 1996 with 220 employees and three planes serving five destinations. The company now has 6,700 employees and a fleet of 70 Boeing 737s that serve 47 cities in North America and the Caribbean.
William Lee, WestJet’s manager of technical infrastructure, says the airline looked into traffic-shaping technology to help optimize bandwidth utilization and meet transaction response-time requirements for its online reservation system and VoIP applications.
To get the project going, WestJet deployed a PacketShaper appliance from Packeteer in its data center on a trial basis, initially to gain visibility into all the applications running on its network. From the start the PacketShaper helped WestJet better allocate bandwidth and improve application performance, but the benefits really became clear when users complained after the trial ended, Lee recalls. In particular, the end users at the remote site WestJet used to trial Packeteer’s compression technology didn’t want the IT department to give the device back after seeing improvements in response time, he says. “They really noticed a difference,” he says.
Once WestJet committed to the technology, the company implemented two PacketShaper 6500 appliances and later upgraded those to redundant PacketShaper 10000s in the data center. It also deployed PacketShaper 3500 appliances at 10 of its larger bases of operation and has plans to continue deploying the devices to most of its airports. In addition, WestJet uses Packeteer’s compression technologies at locations with 1Mbps links to WestJet’s MPLS network.
“We started at the core, putting in two appliances at the core to do packet shaping. Then [in 2007] we started doing it at the edge of the WAN,” Lee says. “So now we’re not just doing packet shaping, we’re also doing compression with devices on both ends.”
With the traffic-shaping technology WestJet can make sure its online reservation system and VoIP applications get the highest priority, but without completely denying recreational traffic, according to Lee. “What’s good about the packet-shaping is that you don’t actually need to kill the connection, you just give [recreational applications] a fairly small connection,” he says.
The airline expects a return on its investment in less than a year by avoiding an immediate increase in WAN bandwidth. While future bandwidth upgrades will be unavoidable, WestJet is in a better position to plan those upgrades with the visibility it gets from the PacketShapers, Lee says. (Compare Web Site Application and Performance Management products)
In addition, having the Packeteer technology in house lets WestJet skip using traffic management features available through its MPLS carrier. WestJet can do bandwidth provisioning on its own with the PacketShapers — with better results and for less money than the carrier charges, according to Lee. “We can control it ourselves,” he says.
Packeteer partner Alternative Converged Solutions Inc. (ACSI) of Calgary helped WestJet in the design, pilot project and deployment of the PacketShapers.
