Virtual WAN Optimization Appliance Roundup

Are you thinking of practical ways of improving network performance? Then the answer is wan acceleration. These technologies can provide you numerous benefits that will be promptly noticed in your business. In modern times business enterprises are putting in a lot of focus on their networks. One of the critical components for attaining success in the world of business is network efficiency. If you have the notion that the improvements caused by wan acceleration are seen just by the information technology executives, then you are entirely mistaken. The results are visible to the end users, too though they may not have a solid grasp of the technology supporting it. 

Improvement of performance

Wan accelerators include the use of technologies for the optimization of a wide area network. You will be surprised to note that wan optimization may be the answer to a host of your network issues. WAN Optimization is a boon for improving performance across long network circuits. These products worked out effectively in the case of telecom industries. They were beneficial during those times when network bandwidth used to be very costly.

·         Faster data transfer

The concept of wan optimization revolves around the prioritization of specific parts of the network for obtaining additional bandwidth. You may be involved in crucial data processing work, and for rapid completion of the work, you might need an allocation of additional throughput as well as bandwidth. All these changes are possible with the help of appropriate wan technologies.  WAN Optimization can make the process of data transfer faster and lead to an improvement in disaster recovery. 

·         Caching concept

Some of the benefits that the end users are going to experience are quicker file accessibility. At this juncture, you will understand the significance of caching. When an individual uses the same files on a continuous basis, then she will be in a position to access them faster. In these cases, the need for reloading does not arise. Only new data is saved and retrieved when necessary.  

·         Reliable operations

The wan solutions ensure the maximization of network speed between different locations and results in accelerated file transfers. Those non affected applications will have smoother operations now because of the availability of bandwidth. If you examine the voice over internet protocol, then you will find that they are currently operating more reliably nowadays. 

·         Basic understanding

If you are still pondering whether the optimization is suitable for your business or not, then you must first assess your current capabilities. You should also evaluate the needs of individual offices within your organizational structure. Once you are done with the identification of the requirements, then you will need to determine the type of optimization appliances you will require for meeting the business goals. Keep the scalability factor in mind. The final step is implementation. Though these solutions are not at all complicated, but they need to be implemented in the right way to get desirable results. 

Making an intelligent solution

It is a smart idea to make a comprehensive study on the net to find the prominent names in the industry for providing network solutions. 

Why You Need Both WAN Optimization and SD-WAN

You must be knowing that nowadays, SD-WAN is fast gaining popularity. Simultaneously, the demand for WAN Optimization is waning. A bit of research will reveal the reasons. SD-WAN has the technology to optimally route the traffic, considering an overlay of systemized multiple modes of transport on WAN. Resultantly, you experience a substantial boost to usable capacity. It decreases your requirements for the WAN optimization application. But, the process of WAN optimization is still relevant. SD-WAN does not cover all the benefits that WAN Optimization renders to your system. 

Importance of WAN

About fifteen years ago, in the year 2004, WAN optimization started to become popular, along with wan acceleration process. It aimed to address three major networking users that you, as an end-user, had to experience while accessing data across the WAN. Those networking issues were – 

• Bandwidth
• Latency
• Packet loss 

Solving the bandwidth issue

The technology addressed the bandwidth issue by minimizing the data quantity that passed across the system network. It did the job by using compression techniques and deduplication algorithms. If you implement the technology in your system, it also prioritizes application traffic. With wan acceleration technique, you get guaranteed access to the wire even when you are heavily using it. 

Managing latency problems 

You must know that when the distance between the end-users or clients and their data increases, latency, and packet loss become the principal determinants of the session capacity. Latency has another term for itself, that is network delay. It is the time that the packets take to travel from one designated point in the network to another. You can minimize latency by application of caching techniques. You also use optimizations specific to protocols. 

Minimizing packet loss

You experience packet loss when you experience network congestion or infrastructural glitches. You express the loss with percentage points. WAN uses the forward error connection technique, or FEC in short, to address the problem of packet loss. It aims to regenerate lost packets without any requirement of the transmission process. 

Significance of SD-WAN

You must be aware of the fact that SD-WAN improves the performance of the overall network. IN the case of WAN optimization, it is about the performance of a single network connection. You can read below the particular issues that SD-WAN addresses. 

• The cost – Your organization, would enjoy flexibility in designing networks with the implementation of SD-WAN. The reason is SD-WAN uses inexpensive internet circuits. 

• Capacity and system performance – SD-WAN provides you more capacity at various locations. With load-balancing connections, your business can potentially increase the capacity even more. 

• Cloud technology access – WAN cannot optimize specific cloud access. SD-WAN, with its simple installation, can optimize cloud access. 

Implement both to boost performance 

You will get cost and network performance benefits with SD-WAN. With WAN, you get better solutions in traffic management issues. Once the traffic leaves the endpoint location of the network, it follows the rules of WAN. SD-WAN has no role to play after that. Hence, it is rational that you integrate both WAN and SD-WAN in the system. It will undoubtedly overhaul the performance of the network. 

7 Ways to Improve Efficient Networks through WAN Optimization

Applications are a lot smarter today while the bandwidth is much cheaper. Can you blame anyone for thinking that revamping the Wide Area Network is one of the unnecessary expenses? In the current world that is obsessed with embracing hybrids and WANs and clouds, the optimization is a lot more relevant now, than it ever was. Here are the top seven ways that you can improve efficient networks with the help of it, and they are mentioned down below.

Recovering lost packets and correcting the packet order

Recovery of lost packages and the correction of forwarding error ensure that the data is reliably delivered. This is one of the essential WAN Optimization techniques that improve not just the quality of links but enhances application performance. Furthermore, this single step also accelerates the transmission control protocol (TCP). After there has been the recovery of the lost packets, correcting the order of the packer on the fly helps in avoiding impacts of negative performances as well as retransmissions because of packages that went out-of-order.

Selection of path and service quality 

To maintain service quality, deeply inspecting the packet and classifying it is necessary. Therefore, WAN Optimization marks and shapes the traffic to ensure priority of business and that bandwidth-intensive traffic receives optimal service quality. This method is followed by balancing the load of the traffic over multiple gateways of WAN by setting layer-7 policies of traffic and link-metric thresholds.

Universal de-duplication and accelerating the TCP

Cross-flow de-duplication helps in removing the duplicate patterns of byte regardless of the protocol at the source. It eliminates the byte patterns irrespective of session or application that originated because of the data at the start. It saves the byte patterns persistently on disks for network matches in the future. The fully transparent performance of TCP acceleration enhancing proxy (PEP) significantly improves the performance of TCP with a TCP of high speed. 

The firewall in Layer 7

On deep inspection of the packet, the process filters traffic and the application signatures at the edge of the branch.

Bridge appliance and tunnel mode 

Some optimizers bridge appliances by default. They enable quick and straightforward deployment. Furthermore, they are also non-intrusive and thus preserve the flow of natural traffic. The mode of the tunnel, on the other hand, compliments the bridge mode as a flexible and alternative option of deployment to route the traffic. It is achieved through optimizers.

Transparency of network and analytics of Netflow

Open-Source Linux powers the interface of web and provides visibility into the optimizer’s performance. It also provides visibility into the configuration options, information of system health, and protocol statistics. The optimizers maintain transparency of network where for the clarity of network, destination, and source addresses are preserved. It never translates proxy traffic or addresses.

Compression of the stream 

Stream compression of network data on the move in real-time, for higher ratios of compression helps to improve the network efficiency. Such a compression helps with savings of bandwidth and acceleration that further prioritizes traffic.