WAN Performance

[eazeaz]

I am throwing this out there in case anyone is struggling with a poorly performing WAN. And no, I do not work for Riverbed.

About a year ago we did a "free eval" of some Riverbed WAN accelerator appliances. 5 days after the appliances arrived management opened the checkbook and bought them. I can say a year later that they have been the best tech purchase (The shoretel system is a close 2nd) we have ever made.

While expensive, they have been management FREE, hassle FREE, etc. Setup time was about 1 hour per side (included unboxing and rack mounting).

You can see by the attached report that over the last week 34.7GB of data would have traversed the WAN. The steelhead reduced it to 499.4MB (71.3x reduction in bandwidth needed).

We have been able to go from DS3 circuits to T1's in some instances.

Before the appliances we were maxing out T1 circuits between two of our locations. After, we average throughput of 18k... yes 18k.

If you have a link that is close to being saturated, or unhappy users, a free eval may be worth a look-see.


Gary

[Forum]

So...what kind of cost does the 520 run?

[eazeaz]

Cost

the 520's were about 8,000 a piece I believe. They go up in price based on connection and bandwidth requirements.

It sounds crazy, but a DS3 between our locations was 3,000 per month. A t1 is 300.

[cburgy]

Or you could do Juniper's WXC line of products. Juniper has also transferred this wan acceleration capability into a card (including the hard drive for caching) that slides into their J series and M series routers. No need for a seperate appliance, you can do it all within the routers you are already deploying.

[mblackstone]

Yes, Riverbed rocks. While there are other vendors, nobody is really touching them right now. They are way ahead of the game.

[mblackstone]

Riverbed

Or you could do Juniper's WXC line of products. Juniper has also transferred this wan acceleration capability into a card (including the hard drive for caching) that slides into their J series and M series routers. No need for a seperate appliance, you can do it all within the routers you are already deploying.

In the interest of full disclosure, Ill say I work for a RB reseller. We always tell people to just bake them off. Get both and try them. Then pick the best solution for you.
More often than not, RB wins hands down.