WAN Optimization - Causes

'Network is the OS', considering this as a motto major vendors are working out to release products that will be out in near future. Right now majority of users can use their computers with or without an internet connection. But most of the SME businesses have operations spanned across various locations with need to address the issues arising from computer networks. One such evolution of technology is to optimize wide area network. This article will give you a picture of causes for WAN Optimization Technology.

Causes

There are some proven concepts that create a dent on budget for IT infrastructure of businesses. What are they?

1. Network Latency
2. Lower Bandwidth
3. Chatty Protocols
4. Application Performance
5. Pocket Loss

Network Latency

Latency can be meaured by Roundtrip time (RTT) which is the time taken for a request from the client and response from the server. A best example of low latency network is your Local Area Network or LAN where the distance between your PC and the response server is relatively low with a minimal set of network hardwares installed on the path. The RTT increases as the distance between the requester & responder increase alongwith more number of intermediate networking devices. A higher latency network always result in a decrease in throughput.

Lower Bandwidth

Capacity of any link is denoted by its bandwidth. A higher bandwidth link costs more because of its potential to handle larger transfer rates and negligible outage. Example of higher bandwidth is Optical Fibre (OF) and DS3. A limited bandwidth link of fewer kbps installed in any of the branch locations cannot support the requirement of a large data transfer with other locations. Examples of lower bandwidth are Frame Relay, ATM, MPLS, Cellular and Satellite networks.

Chatty Protocols

Some protocols take longer time to respond on the user side. Chatty protocols use multiple communications between the ends for a single request. It takes more time to establish a connection before starting any transfer of data. This results to a lower throughput and under utilization of network bandwidth. Few of the chatty protocols are TCP, HTTP, CIFS and FTP.

Application Performance

An efficient organization needs wide variety applications to be deployed to increase the productivity. Employees of those organization need access to applications installed on other locations at greater speed as they are available on the LAN. Performance of applications deter because of clogged network and reduced throughput. One cannot be sure of which application uses higher bandwidth and which does not unless they have deployed Quality of Service (QoS) on their network gateway. There is not much control over applications like email, storage/backup, ftp that use sheer volume of data and the need to communicate between the ends must be maintained over a WAN.

Pocket Loss

A higher bandwidth usage over a WAN could result to an increase in pocket loss. Few protocols reduce the transmission speed to counter the pocket loss and resulting in under utilization of bandwidth. Often content streaming like audio / video ares affected by pocket loss.

WAN Optimization has breached the US $1bn barrier and is growing on an average of more than 20% year-on-year. For a distributed environment business continuity and disaster recovery, wan optimization is a must to implement technology to maintain a high quality network. There are more number of vendors with products and solutions looking for customers to address the above discussed issues and with more specific solutions for all industry verticals. Marketing could hide the fact, but as a business partner you need to gain knowledge on the technology and profit your business.