NPM Network Performance Manager
APM Application Performance Manager
WAN acceleration products through the user's branch offices and partners no matter what corner of the earth, can easily accelerate their critical applications and data, access to near-LAN application access experience over the WAN.
The reason WAN acceleration of
the current, wide area network transmission problems enterprise customers mainly from two aspects, namely the link with the application. Link problems include limited bandwidth, large network delay, packet loss rate, severe; application problems are concentrated in a large amount of data transmission, transmission efficiency is low and their application in a WAN environment. WAN acceleration device provides a set of optimization techniques for transmission over the network and application interaction issues.
Common WAN acceleration technology
data caching
data cache technology (in green environment, this technology is of decisive importance to help users enhance the value of the actual transmission capacity and bandwidth)
caching technology very early, it is mainly used to solve the bandwidth bottleneck application latency issues. There are a number of products on the market more typical is the use of WEB file caching and byte caching data both. WEB cache file to the device, primarily for accessing WEB application, there is no effect for a TCP application; and a dynamic cache, since the data compressed according to a high frequency repetitive manner the pointer byte cache in the device when, the next encounter the same data will be accessed directly from the cache. (Such is the current mainstream technology; the technology is to solve the file synchronization level of "acceleration" from the presence of the target, to accelerate the application of the system mainly by other related technologies)
TCP optimization and application optimization
TCP optimization and application optimization (this is one of the key areas of technology to optimize WAN). TCP acceleration or a dedicated application acceleration devices can help to improve application performance network environments, such as large bandwidth links, large file transfers, high latency, considerable network transactions. TCP optimization to solve the major packet loss, TCP latency issues; the main application optimization to solve application latency issues (if an application in the application layer message size is limited applications and data, and recognized the need to respond, no matter how much bandwidth is sufficient, or whether have avoided the response mechanism caused by the end of the TCP protocol bottlenecks delayed or slow start and congestion control behavior of TCP latency bottleneck caused by the application delay the inevitable.). Currently on the market of professional TCP acceleration and application acceleration equipment at both ends of the device requires the deployment of enterprise links, the cost is very high. These dedicated accelerator requires its own special protocol can achieve acceleration effect, that is web-based is opaque. Consequence, network management personnel or the system is unable to see the applications running over the WAN, there is a need for these special transmission protocol used special equipment to open the channel on the security device, a security risk.
Data compression
Compression increases application performance, create greater throughput, faster performance and greater network capacity. Compression can transmit data more quickly, so that more traffic with limited WAN links. When more bandwidth, the performance of the most critical business applications can be greatly improved. Data compression apparatus need be used in pairs, two endpoints connected deployed. Most of the companies will each deploy one device in its various branches, you can exchange traffic between such branches as well as the primary site. This deployment scenario can fully utilize all the bandwidth across the enterprise. Each device compresses Outbound traffic, endpoint device receives compressed Inbound solution flow, the flow rate will be restored to its original state. Data compression technology is mainly to solve the bandwidth bottleneck, has broad applicability.
Quality of service control QoS
Quality of Service QoS bandwidth management control or help reduce bandwidth competition. For precious WAN bandwidth, there will be competition between applications, an effective way to compete is to control bandwidth allocation and quality of service (QoS) tools. Application WAN IT staff can be allocated according to business rules application priority, to ensure that the application is able to obtain sufficient bandwidth, thereby improving productivity is closely related to your business.
After writing only to find, in fact, the above techniques only real TCP optimization techniques to improve the transmission speed WAN. Several other technologies are in WAN optimization, WAN acceleration, but the questions are not changed.
Now enterprise internationalization, globalization is already a very common thing. Whether it is self-built network, or cloud service providers need to take advantage of WAN (wide area network) to connect each site.
The hybrid WAN connection has become mainstream: MPLS VPN or leased line, Internet to connect remote sites or public cloud. WAN is like the highway, distance, bandwidth, latency will always affect the top experience.
It is said to increase the bandwidth is not solved yet? !
In actual fact, there are many places to consider, not the overall WAN performance gains, the upper application will never have a good experience.
When I entered the Chevron in 2009, the company has been in line for global WAN optimization with Riverbed Steelhead, WAN acceleration can reach 2-4 times.
When I set up the three South China Sea offshore drilling platform infrastructure, Riverbed Steelhead is denied, because the offshore drilling platform can only use satellite communications, but low-bandwidth satellite link (1.5Mbps), high latency (500ms), the upper application experience poor
Riverbed Steelhead WAN optimization in this extreme environment fully reflects its value, the upper layer application experience to improve.
This paper will Riverbed Steelhead company and its core product to make a brief introduction.
Riverbed in 2002, founded by Jerry Kennelly, so far he is still CEO. The company formerly known as NBT (Next Big Thing), was renamed in 2003 as Riverbed, headquartered in San Francisco.
Riverbed defines itself as an Application Performance company, focused on creating WAN performance optimization.
Now there are four main product lines:
- Riverbed SteelHead: the industry's first WAN optimization solutions.
- Riverbed SteelCentral: performance management and control suite.
- Riverbed SteelConnect: the next generation of SD-WAN platform.
- Riverbed SteelFusion: zero branch site IT solutions.
In the latest 2016 Gartner WAN Optimization Magic Quadrant report, Riverbed is still in the leaders quadrant, and occupy the WAN optimization market share of 51.3%, is the industry's absolute first.
Of course, we are very pleased to see Chinese companies Sangfor (SINFOR) appear in the Magic Quadrant, although in the quadrant players, but we expect him to get better and better.
Two major problems affecting WAN performance:
Delay: Chatty Applications and Protocols (long-winded applications and protocols) will always be a lot of back and forth interaction (Server a contract, ask the other party Server is received, then the other side to respond, and so forth), if the WAN are far away, the result is more bad.
Send a 60M PPT files, this will happen again and again 2000-3000 times. Such a simple file transfer will result in a delay of 20ms-1200ms.
TCP window size: limiting the throughput of each packet. Of course, increasing the bandwidth will expand the size of the entire pipeline to process more data interaction, but interaction of each package is limited by the TCP window size and the use of small pipes.
Riverbed Steelhead how to solve these problems?
Steelhead are deployed in pairs at least, if you want to implement WAN optimization multiple sites, each site that had to be deployed. It is located behind routers, it is applicable to any WAN lines.
Steelhead using three core technologies to optimize WAN:
Data Streamlining
Not send duplicate data: said data message or heavy mechanisms, duplicate user access to certain data, the other end of Steelhead will announce a reference value in a manner 16Bytes Steelhead end, these data have been transmitted over, you can locally recombination.
Scalable data by reference: for example, a user downloads a file from the server, the sending and receiving ends of the document and Steelhead saw cut into small pieces exist locally. Then the user changes the file and send email to the original location of a colleague 10, the data in this example is only transmitted on the WAN changed, the reference value distal Advertisement 16Bytes recombinant Steelhead how documents.
Only care about data: for Steelhead, the data is the data, no matter what format or from any application. Think about how many in a file or application "the" and "a" (how many Chinese environment, "the"), Steelhead Bytes think those are the same, no need to send it again, this mechanism deduplication can reduce 65% -95 % of data transmission across the WAN.
Transport Streamlining
Faster speeds and from: the traditional TCP follow the "slow start" rule that sends start with small blocks of data, continues to increase until the receiving end of a data block can not be processed until the large blocks of data, and then began again, and repeat the process. Transport Streamlining avoid TCP restart, to find an optimal packet size, and has been using this size to send data.
Binding Data Streamlining and Transport Streamlining of: Transport Streamlining achieve fewer round trips (up to 98% reduction), and each pass send more data, which makes the throughput increases, binding Data Streamlining, each packets may utilize a reference value of the virtual bearer 16Bytes MB of data.
Application Streamlining
Adjust a variety of application protocols, such as CIFS, HTTP, HTTPS, MAPI, NFS, and SQL, and so on. Chattiness various agreements do understand, the original sender and the receiver end and from the end of the interaction in the LAN, that is, the sender and the local Steelhead interaction, interactive remote Steelhead and the receiving end, to avoid a large number of repeated interaction across the WAN.
The following is a Gartner for Riverbed's strengths and considerations of the original, for your reference:
Strengths
- Riverbed offers the broadest set of capabilities in the industry, including features for largebranch office networks, data center replication and storage networking protocols,single remote users, and optimization to cloud services.
- Riverbed offers a gooddirect internet solution with IP VPN and single-ended HTTP caching, advanced SSL proxy for public SaaS connectivity, and internet- and SaaS-specificvisibility.
- The combination of SteelHead and SteelCentral App Response provides very good visibility andreporting capabilities for drill-down reporting across networks, servers,applications, web apps, pages, objects, sites and users (including end-userexperience).
- The new Secure Transportfeature supports an IPsec-encrypted overlay mesh network, and a partnership with Zscaler provides the ability to scan optimized traffic for securitypurposes before going to the cloud.
Cautions
- Riverbed's price can besignificantly higher than its leading competitors, and although it does respondwhen competitively challenged, its discount policies can be inflexible andinconsistent.
- Riverbed's portfolio isextensive and has a broad solution scope, with six product ranges and multipleoptions within each range. However, this can make it difficult to understandhow to meet functional needs.
- Riverbed has innovatedless in the past 12 months than previously, and has been slow to embrace hybridand SD-WAN. Its WAN path selection capabilities are more basic thansegment-leading vendors.
- Gartner clients havereported that the solution can be difficult to manage in complex applicationenvironments, which can lead to misconfiguration and degraded applicationperformance. However, Riverbed is adding autoconfiguration capabilities, andsupport is very responsive and highly rated by Gartner clients.