Australian upstart Exinda Networks is in this week’s “ADS Customers Speak” spotlight. While leading US vendors like Riverbed, Cisco, Juniper, Packeteer and Blue Coat focus on high-end, high-performance application delivery solutions, this strappy little company from down under is racing after the middle market—which may well be larger overall than the top-of-the-line market. This week we ask Exinda’s customers’ to share their experiences with the Exinda x800 product.
Founded in 2002 as a network monitoring and application visibility company, Exinda subsequently morphed into a WAN optimization and application acceleration solution vendor—but with an unusual twist. Exinda is the only vendor we know of with a Web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for centrally managing WAN optimization appliances from anywhere via a Web browser.
This is appealing to thinly-staffed small to medium sized businesses as well as the VARs and carriers that serve them, because it is very easy to install and manage. Exinda’s SaaS management capability, called Service Delivery Point (SDP), runs from Exinda’s facilities enabling a customer to buy and deploy x800 appliances without the fuss of setting up a management and monitoring system. It also offers good visibility into end-user response time.
Among the x800 product features that Exinda touts are bandwidth utilization reporting by application, host, or individual traffic flow, and the ability to detect and control recreational peer-to-peer traffic such as BitTorrent and Limeware. Exinda continually updates its signatures to deal with new or updated peer-to-peer applications.
The x800 accelerates TCP, CIFS, and HTTP, plus it does dictionary compression. It also provides bandwidth allocation, as well as priority handling through ToS and DiffServ tagging. The appliance is available in form factors suited for the small branch office, medium to large branch or headquarters office, and for the data center.
If you have deployed an Exinda x800 solution, tell us what you think. Does it live up to your expectations? What were your impressions? A simple “I like it”, “I have mixed feelings”, or “I hate it” response is fine—but if you have insight to share with the community, then talk all you want. You can post a reply to this blog using your name or anonymously.
If you are using Expand or Silver Peak solutions, your turn will come in a future blog. If you are using another major vendor’s product, check our previous Wednesday blogs and add your comments.
