* Juniper is becoming a pivotal player in the WAN optimization market
With the acquisitions of Peribit and Redline Networks under way http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/0426junibuy.html?rl, Juniper is well on its way to becoming a pivotal player in the WAN optimization market.
The vendor recently laid out best practices for achieving LAN-like performance over enterprise WANs in a company white paper https://www.webtorials.com/main/resource/papers/juniper/paper26.htm posted this month. To start, Juniper advises against a bandwidth buy, just in case the costs – in both time and money – outweigh the benefits. In many cases, the paper points out a poorly configured application could be the culprit behind slow-moving wide-area applications http://www.networkworld.com/techinsider/2004/0614techinsiderband.html?rl. Juniper says its compression and caching technology can help enterprise IT managers “gain instant WAN capacity on the existing network.”
In terms of speeding traffic over wide-area links, latency http://www.networkworld.com/news/2003/0922peribit.html?rl poses the biggest challenge, Juniper says in this paper. WAN optimization and application acceleration platforms require both TCP acceleration and application-specific acceleration. “Latency affects application performance because the underlying protocols rely on a back-and-forth sequence of data transmissions and acknowledgements,” the paper explains.
Following bandwidth and latency concerns, enterprise IT managers should direct their attention toward QoS support and configuration, according to Juniper http://www.networkworld.com/careers/2005/051605man.html?rl. Because speeds between the LAN and the WAN differ, “contention for WAN real estate is a very real problem that needs to be addressed with an effective and realistic QoS and bandwidth allocation model,” which can also be aligned with a company’s specific business priorities, Juniper says.
Juniper goes on to detail how network placement, deployment flexibility and ease of use will help IT managers reap more benefits from their WAN optimization and application acceleration platform. Other factors to consider include using multiple WAN links, monitoring tools and scalability. Lastly, Juniper recommends IT managers seriously incorporate security in their WAN optimization plans. http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/accel/2005/0725netop1.html?rl
“Enterprises no longer have the luxury of securing just their private WANs and avoiding the Internet for business transactions,” the paper states. “IT needs tools to make all transports secure enough for these business transmissions.”https://www.webtorials.com/main/resource/papers/juniper/paper26.htm. And to learn more about Juniper products in general, go to http://www.juniper.net.
To read in great detail Juniper’s best practices and how its product line meets the criteria, go to
