Traffic Management Tools Fight Growing Pains

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Traffic Management Tools Fight Growing Pains
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Rawlson O’Neil King, theWHIR.com
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June 4, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY
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REVIEW) — The rapid proliferation of network operation centers and
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peering points has created new demands and challenges for service
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providers. Increasing numbers of users and bandwidth-intensive
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applications have put huge strains on networks, creating a growing
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market for solutions that enable businesses and service providers to
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ensure reliable performance of enterprise, e-commerce and e-business
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applications; increase network efficiency; and enable the convergence
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of data, voice and video traffic.
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The combined impact of such new
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applications is that network performance suffers. At best, performance
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is inconsistent and unpredictable, and at worst, it is consistently
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slow and frustrating, which impacts productivity and, in the case of
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e-commerce, profitability.
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The common response from many enterprises
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and service providers is simply to increase bandwidth. Network managers
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spend large portions of their budgets on bandwidth upgrades in attempts
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to solve performance problems. Usually their efforts are in vain,
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because traffic and control problems normally persist.
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Increased use of intensive applications
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results in an unending cycle of more traffic, more unmanaged congestion
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and bandwidth bottlenecks as new bandwidth connections become
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saturated. Increased bandwidth also always imposes a set-up cost.
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Enlarging bandwidth pipes always increases costs, and such costs are
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always recurring. Continually increasing bandwidth can thereby be
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construed as a cyclical model with limited benefits. In networks
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overwhelmed by increasing traffic and unmanaged congestion, application
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performance and company productivity will persistently be undermined,
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even after bandwidth upgrades.
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The challenge to enterprises and service
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providers therefore is to exercise more visibility into, and control
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over, bandwidth allocation and utilization within their data centers.
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In terms of the network services, service providers need to improve and
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protect the performance of their clients’ urgent and critical business
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applications. They need to pace important but less urgent traffic. They
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need to provision bandwidth for streaming applications to ensure smooth
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reception. And lastly, service providers need to compress traffic so
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that more data can fit through increasingly constrained links. Traffic
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optimization and control solutions can address all these requirements
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by ensuring the efficient routing of data and through the
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implementation of policy-based bandwidth usage.
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Good traffic optimization systems allow
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service providers to gain visibility, control bandwidth and compress
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traffic. A solution should inform network administrators precisely what
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applications traverse the network, what portion of the network they
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consume, how well they perform, and where delays originate. A solution
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should also offer policy-based bandwidth allocation to boost or curb
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application performance over network connections. Flexible policies
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protect critical applications, pace greedy traffic, limit recreational
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usage, and block malicious traffic. Finally, traffic optimization
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should enable more data to flow through constrained links, freeing
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bandwidth for the critical applications that need it.
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Traffic optimization solution developer Packeteer (packeteer.com)
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says its technology can solve all those problems for a hosting company.
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Packeteer offers a comprehensive set of solutions that provide
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visibility, control, compression, and management of Internet-enabled
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business applications and managed application services. These solutions
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- which include PacketSeeker PacketShaper, PacketShaper Xpress,
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ReportCenter, and PolicyCenter – enable service providers to offer a
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platform for delivering application-intelligent network services that
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control quality of service and expand revenue opportunities.
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For businesses, these solutions optimize
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use of network resources, and align application performance with
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business priorities. Packeteer delivers its application traffic
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management system via intelligent appliances at the local area network
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and wide area network interface. This helps enterprises maximize IT
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investments by aligning network applications and resources with
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business needs, providing significant cost savings in the process. The
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Packeteer system protects and accelerates key business applications and
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controls malicious, recreational and other non-business traffic.
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Packeteer’s solutions automatically
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detect more than 400 applications running on an enterprise WAN and
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allow users to set policies and partitions to ensure that critical
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application get the network resources they need to perform optimally.
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With its multi-algorithm compression, Packeteer also ensures that an
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algorithm to enhance network performance compresses multiple traffic
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types. This allows users to obtain 10 times the compression on some
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traffic types.
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IDC (idc.com)
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is quite impressed with the technology. Late in May 2004, the research
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firm showed that Packeteer had almost four times the market share of
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its next closest competitor.
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“WAN managers and IT architects are under
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pressure to cost-effectively manage bandwidth costs while improving
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application performance,” noted IDC analyst Stephen Elliot. “Adding
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additional bandwidth to improve WAN application performance is the
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wrong approach as it does not provide cost efficiencies and utilization
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improvements. Packeteer has been and continues to be the major dominant
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vendor in this market.”
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Indeed, in a recent case study, a Fortune
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1000 company that was initially spending over $1 million a year in
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bandwidth and was experiencing bottlenecks was able to able to save
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$600,000 in bandwidth costs and lower connectivity demands with a
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$200,000 investment in Packeteer technology.
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This is a powerful example of the
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cost-savings that application traffic management systems can exact for
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large businesses and service providers with comparable bandwidth
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requirements.
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