WAN optimization has been a market need for as long as WANs have been around. In the early years of the WAN, bandwidth was an expensive resource. Hence, network managers were keen on squeezing every ounce of performance from their network. They achieved this goal in the following ways:
- Data compression to conserve bandwidth (think of this as a real-time version of the humble WinZip)
- Deduplication to remove duplicate data before transmission by sending references rather than the original data.
- TCP Optimization – TCP, the mainstay of the Internet ever since the Internet’s invention, is inherently chatty. Refinements such as window-size scaling, selective acknowledgments, and Layer 3 congestion control algorithms, make it more efficient.
- Caching – This involves storing copies of the frequently requested data closer to the user.
IS WAN OPTIMIZATION REQUIRED IN THIS DAY AND AGE? IF SO WHY?
The need for WAN optimization was understandable when bandwidth was a precious resource. Over the years, the cost per bit has reduced dramatically. Why, then, do we need to conserve bandwidth?
This answer to this question differentiates the traditional WAN optimization solutions from more modern ones like Aryaka’s Smart Optimize.
WAN engineers today lose sleep over issues like Round Trip Time (RTT), Jitter, and Packet Loss. A high bandwidth does not ensure low RTT, Jitter, or packet loss. WAN links operate over long distances, and latency creeps in the middle mile while unreliable links used in the last mile are responsible for high jitter and packet loss.
WAN optimization is still a crucial area in the modern context, and the solutions that address this challenge must solve the problem at two levels – The Middle Mile and the Last Mile.
WHAT KIND OF APPLICATIONS BENEFIT FROM WAN OPTIMIZATION?
Cloud and SaaS Connectivity: For businesses moving to the cloud, application performance issues are fairly common, especially when the distance between Software-as-a-Service(SaaS)-based applications or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) /Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)-based datacenters and users are more than a few hundred miles apart (or even 60 milliseconds or higher in network speed).
Aryaka’s POPs are situated within only 1 to 5ms of the most widely adopted cloud service providers’ data centers around the world. In addition, Aryaka delivers private connectivity to Microsoft Azure, AWS, Oracle, and Alibaba.
Global File and Data Transfer: The most common protocols used for this application are FTP and CIFS. While CIFS is overly “chatty” in nature, FTP is highly susceptible to unpredictable latency, packet loss, and jitter over congested mediums like the public Internet.
Aryaka addresses bandwidth constraints, latency issues, and other inefficiencies of CIFS and FTP using application acceleration proxies, TCP optimization, compression, and Advanced Redundancy Removal™ (ARR) or data deduplication. Delays associated with data retrieval are minimized, leading to accelerated response times and higher productivity.
Email Applications: Email applications work great on a local area network (LAN). But when stretched over a WAN that crosses continents and oceans, the performance of routine tasks like email, calendaring, and contacts is adversely affected. Moreover, networks congested by email clutter can starve other mission-critical applications such as VoIP and ERP. Expensive and cumbersome options include deploying additional email servers at branch offices or adding more network bandwidth.
Aryaka’s provides significant performance improvements by enhancing the speed in sending, receiving, and replicating emails through a combination of compression and data deduplication (ARR™) technologies. This enables enterprise users in remote offices to access email servers in centralized and distant datacenters with responsiveness similar to that from a local mail server. Here, Aryaka removes all redundancy from WAN traffic, ensuring that multiple copies of an email and emails with large attachments are not resent across the WAN. This results in better and faster email access.
ERP and CRM Application Performance
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems support almost every function in an organization, including finance, sales, procurement, customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management, human resources, and more. Tightly integrated with all of these systems, ERP systems enable inter – and intradepartmental collaboration, even if the employees are distributed across the globe. Additionally, the performance of these mission-critical applications has a direct impact on business productivity and profitability.
A MODERN APPROACH TO WAN OPTIMIZATION
Aryaka SmartOptimize is an on-demand, application-optimization, and acceleration delivered-as-a-service. It is also a key component of SmartConnect. Aryaka’s patented architecture optimizes and compresses WAN traffic in multiple ways, delivering LAN-like performance via a private Layer 2 core with QoS and intelligent edge optimization, multi-segment transport optimization for TCP, Advanced Redundancy Removal for any uncompressed and unencrypted application, and application acceleration for SSL and CIFS/SMB.
The combination of Aryaka’s multiple layers of WAN optimization offers unparalleled and industry-leading performance. One can verify performance SLAs via the MyAryaka cloud portal. The core capabilities of the solution are:
TCP & UDP Optimization: Aryaka uses patented multi-segment TCP optimization techniques, while the underlying network QoS benefits both TCP and UDP. Enterprise cloud applications, including Office365, Salesforce, and UCaaS, behave as if they are local to the user.
Network Acceleration: Aryaka Offers enterprises the benefits of link aggregation and reduced network complexity at branch offices. It includes Load Balancing, Path Selection, and Single and Dual Link Packet Loss Recovery with proprietary error correction algorithms.
Data Compression: Aryaka delivers bandwidth optimization reduction that reduces the file size of data transmitted over the network, optimizing the available bandwidth across the first mile.
SSL and CIFS Acceleration: Application proxies significantly improve the performance of WAN-intolerant applications by shortening the feedback loop.
