* Packeteer helps Idaho department manage apps, bandwidth
With 40 to 50 field offices and seven regional hubs around the state of Idaho, the Department of Health and Welfare in Boise needed to get a handle on who was using what applications and how much bandwidth the applications consumed.
About a year ago, the IT Services Division that provides LAN/WAN support to more than 3,000 end users decided to invest in appliances to compress data and apply QoS priorities to mission-critical applications and tn3270 host-based connections.
“We were looking forward to flow-detailed records,” with visibility into application traffic flows, says Brent Olson, IT systems integration senior analyst for the department. “I was somewhat skeptical because I thought routers could handle the QoS without having to use more products.”
The department bought 15 PacketShaper appliances in a variety of models to accommodate different WAN connections. Olson says it uses frame relay T-1s and ATM DS-3s to connect the multiple offices and prioritize application traffic.
He reports the appliances compress up to 50% to 75% of application traffic, which helps the company better use its bandwidth. But that isn’t the primary driver for the tools.
“We really wanted to understand how our applications used bandwidth and be able to set priorities based on usage,” Olson says.
The Idaho state department also uses Policy Center to set rules and thresholds for application performance. Policy Center is Packeteer’s centralized administration software for the PacketShaper appliances. Olson plans to upgrade to the new version of the product, set for release this week, to automate his network’s response to viruses and worms. Packeteer will release the software along with a new suite of appliances, dubbed the 10000 Series.
Packeteer says the 10000 Series appliance is able to extend customers’ top-end traffic management abilities to deliver 1G bit/sec of throughput and provide application traffic visibility, control, and acceleration capabilities. The company’s software suite, Packeteer 7, is said to deliver new capabilities, including Adaptive Response Technology, application flow monitoring, and enhanced systemwide reporting and policy management applications.
“There is an adaptive response option that could help us automate our response to viruses and worms and basically just give us ways to deal with suspicious traffic,” he says.
