Two industry insiders debate approaches for speeding WAN traffic.
While application acceleration belongs in the network rack, it doesn’t belong in packet-delivery devices, such as routers and firewalls, but rather in a new class of products focused on application delivery.
Network vendors have focused on elements such as IP addresses and TCP ports to provide a high-performance, secure packet-delivery infrastructure. But to ensure application-level performance and security, application delivery needs to focus on a different set of key elements – the users (who they are and their role), the application and the nature of their interaction (the session). For the future, application delivery will leverage, but remain separate from, packet delivery because of these differences in requirements and focus. It’s like refrigerators and ovens – just because they’re collocated doesn’t mean they should be integrated.
Face-off: The case for application acceleration
Most application-performance problems occur because of inefficiencies and limitations within applications – not because of issues with TCP/IP. Application-performance problems stem mainly from chatty, WAN-inefficient application protocols stretched over long distances, and they cause long user wait time (latency).
Application-specific optimizations are the only way to significantly reduce latency. These protocol optimizations, as well as a comprehensive set of bandwidth-reduction capabilities and business-relevant application prioritization are possible only through understanding the user, application and session. Packet-delivery infrastructure understands none of these things. An application-delivery infrastructure has to.
The evolution of enterprise applications and networks are clarifying the differences between packet delivery and application delivery – and highlighting the need for separate infrastructures.
Applications are evolving. SSL-encrypted applications comprise a rapidly growing 20% to 30% of enterprise traffic. Any enterprise application-delivery solution must be able to accelerate internally or externally hosted SSL applications securely. Packet-level devices are, by design, blind to SSL traffic.
Networks also are evolving. Gartner’s Mark Fabbi has predicted that 50% of enterprises will connect branch offices directly to the Internet by 2009, requiring Internet gateway-style controls at remote sites. While packet-delivery devices are a key part of the enterprise Internet gateway, application-delivery devices must make decisions where knowledge of the user, application and session is required.
Most organizations recognize the different focuses of packet delivery and application delivery, and demand integration of performance and security at the packet level and separate but similar integration at the application layer – performance and security in a single device. Just as kitchens don’t have “refrigerovens,” packet-delivery and application-delivery infrastructures will remain separate.
Periyannan is CTO of Blue Coat Systems. He can be reached at alagu.periyannan@bluecoat.com.
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