WAN Optimization

IT organizations face pressure to increase productivity, improve application performance, support global collaboration, improve data protection, and minimize costs. In today's WAN-centered environments, traditional LAN-oriented infrastructure approaches are insufficient to meet these goals. Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization Fundamentals introduces a better solution: integrating today's new generation of accelerator solutions to efficiently and effectively scale networks beyond traditional capabilities while improving performance and minimizing costs through consolidation.Ted Grevers and Joel Christner begin by reviewing the challenges network professionals face in delivering applications to globally distributed workforces. You learn how accelerators are transforming application business models, enabling IT departments to centralize and consolidate resources while also delivering consistently superior performance.Grevers and Christner show how to identify network consumers, prioritize traffic, and guarantee appropriate throughput and response times to business-critical applications. You learn how to use quality of service techniques such as packet classification and marking and traffic policing, queuing, scheduling, and shaping.Next, you compare options for integrating accelerators and optimization services into your network and for optimizing content delivery. The authors show how to address application protocol-related performance problems that cannot be resolved through compression or flow optimization alone. In the final chapter, the authors walk you through several real-world scenarios for utilizing accelerator technology.Ted Grevers, Jr., is the solution manager for the Cisco® Video IPTV Systems Test and Architecture (C-VISTA) team. He has extensive experience in the content delivery network (CDN) market, focusing on enterprise and service provider content delivery and application optimization needs.Joel Christner, CCIE® No. 15311, is the manager of technical marketing for the Cisco Application Delivery Business Unit (ADBU). He has extensive experience with application protocols, acceleration technologies, LAN/WAN infrastructure, and storage networking. Grevers and Christner are key contributors to the design and architecture of Cisco application delivery and application acceleration solutions. Provide high-performance access to remote data, content, video, rich media, and applications Understand how accelerators can improve network performance and minimize bandwidth consumption Use NetFlow to baseline application requirements and network utilization Ensure network resources are allocated based on business priorities Identify performance barriers arising from networks, protocols, operating systems, hardware, file systems, and applications Employ application-specific acceleration components to mitigate the negative impact of latency and bandwidth consumption Integrate content delivery networks (CDN) to centrally manage the acquisition, security, and distribution of content to remote locations Leverage WAN optimization technologies to improve application throughput, mitigate the impact of latency and loss, and minimize bandwidth consumption Optimize the performance of WANs and business-critical WAN applicationsThis book is part of the Cisco Press® Fundamentals Series. Books in this series introduce networking professionals to new networking technologies, covering network topologies, sample deployment concepts, protocols, and management techniques.Category: Cisco Press/NetworkingCovers: Network Optimization

Increasing data volumes, data replication at offsite, and the greater than ever use of content-rich and Big Data, applications are mandating IT organizations to optimize their network resources. Trends such as Virtualization and Cloud computing further emphasize this requirement of this current era of Big data. To help with this process, companies are increasingly relying on a new generation of WAN optimization Techniques, Appliances, Controllers, Platforms and Products that are displacing standalone physical appliances by offering more scalability, flexibility, and manageability by additional inclusion of software to handle this Big data and bring valuable insights through big data analytics. An optimized WAN environment can increase network reliability, accessibility and availability and improve cost profiles. It also improves the performance and consistency of data backup, replication, and recovery processes. This paper covers the introduction to WAN optimization, prominent WAN optimization techniques, WAN optimization products used for Big data analytics and finally future trends and research Issues of WAN optimization in the ensuing era of Big data.

A WAN optimization controller (WOC) is customer premises equipment (appliance or virtual appliance) that is typically connected to the LAN side of WAN routers, or it is software integrated with client devices, such as servers or routers. WOCs are deployed symmetrically — in data centers and remote locations — and improve the performance of applications that are accessed across a WAN. They address application performance problems caused by bandwidth constraints and latency or protocol limitations, such as TCP and Messaging API (MAPI). The primary function of WOCs is to improve the response times of business-critical applications over WAN links, but they can also help to maximize return on the investment in WAN bandwidth and sometimes avoid the need for costly bandwidth upgrades. To achieve these objectives, WOCs use a combination of techniques, including:

Ad-hoc network is a temporary network that is designed for a special purpose and is developed as soon as the various devices are connected to each other. This type of network degrades the performance of TCP or transmission control protocol which is the core element of internet protocol. The performance of TCP can be enhanced by using various optimization techniques. This paper focuses on the feasibility, advantages and disadvantages of making use of contemporary WAN optimization technologies to overcome the challenges of degrading the performance of TCP in Ad-Hoc Networks. Moreover, the paper will also highlight the significance of the use of Ad-hoc networks by end users in accessing various cloud based services.

Abstract : Wide Area Networks (WAN) have become more prevalent with the expansion of global organizations. WANs have provided more geographical flexibility, shared resources, and have even eased the workload in most organizations when performing at optimal levels. Historically, however, such IT configurations have not been found to provide a measurable level of productivity despite the rapid advances in computing technology. This shortfall has prompted decision makers to explore the Knowledge Value Added (KVA) aspects of IT solutions to define the true return on investment associated with each adoption. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of Cascade, a WAN optimization tool, within the context of the C4I helpdesk model. The actual repair portion of the WAN is beyond the scope of this research; however, the technical support process from notification to corrective action has been modeled and then reengineered to demonstrate the KVA benefits in optimizing the WAN with Cascade and Steelhead products made available through Riverbed Technology.

WAN optimization becomes a well-known technique to improve transmission rate in file transfer applications and interactive applications served in international cloud services. WAN optimization technique can improve transmission speed by using high performance protocols instead of TCP between both ends of wide area network, which has a large round trip time and a high packet loss rate. There are some kinds of high performance protocols, and their effectiveness in improving communication are different from each other based on the characteristics of the networks and applications. When WAN optimization technique is only used at both ends of a heterogeneous network containing networks such as wireless networks, international leased lines, etc. (e.g., access from a mobile device to a foreign cloud data center), improvement in communication is limited because only one high performance protocol is being applied. Therefore, we propose “distributed WAN optimization technique” that dynamically changes high performance protocols and sections to adapt those protocols based on network characteristics and applications.

The present invention discloses a wind storage system WAN optimization configuration, characterized in that the quantization of wind power capacity by a comprehensive assessment of the voltage stability and voltage quality after the wind power, the evaluation system receiving; to improve the air quantity of the receiving capacity, access storage system, according to the needs of different capabilities of receiving, determining the capacity of the energy storage system; energy storage system to optimize the layout and WAN wide Area setpoint based on the principle of loss second order sensitivity. The present invention contemplates a variety of technical indicators after wind power, a comprehensive guide customized energy storage system capacity, and loss sensitivity-based WAN configuration of the energy storage system to further enhance the voltage stability of the system and the wind power improving the quality of the corresponding voltage.

This paper deals with HOW to analyze the requirements for setting up the WAN Optimizer. The criteria's that needs to be taken into account, the steps involved in the analysis of WAN optimization requirement. These entire analyses will give a complete framework for setting up a WAN optimizer within an organization and the organization will have a clear record on the analysis made before setting up this WAN Optimizer.

This paper deals with HOW to analyze the requirements for setting up the WAN Optimizer. The criteria’s that needs to be taken into account, the steps involved in the analysis of WAN optimization requirement. These entire analyses will give a complete framework for setting up a WAN optimizer within an organization and the organization will have a clear record on the analysis made before setting up this WAN Optimizer.

When operating business continuity and disaster recovery systems, it is necessary to transfer the data via WAN (Wide Area Network) to replicate the data from the currently operating system by accommodating it in a secondary office backup system. However, in some cases, it is difficult to ensure sufficient bandwidth or communications speed via the WAN, which connects the currently operating systems and the backup systems. This paper describes what causes such problems in WAN connections and how these problems can be solved by employing a WAN optimization system. The paper also describes how much improvement is enabled by WAN connections when a WAN optimization system is employed.