Application Acceleration
The prominence of Wide Area Networking (WAN) for business applications has brought about a huge surge in demand for technology solution that will accelerate applications, optimize the network, and provide a consolidated Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. Application acceleration is one of the key technologies used by enterprises to speed up the application response time thereby boosting user productivity and revenue. Its products/appliances are defined by Gartner (IT research firm) as those that enable consolidation of servers and data centers, and minimize ownership costs through deploying browser-based application interfaces.
Application delivery is done in two ways, viz. Web-based or Server-based. In Web-based type there is increased traffic load while running applications that are graphics intensive. This increases demand on the WAN links. In Server-based delivery type, the response time in requests processing, moving of data packets across the network and post-processing is crucial. Hence in the two types, the use of Application acceleration techniques is necessary to optimize and improve the applications. Application Acceleration solutions can be categorized as symmetric, asymmetric and those that are offered as a service. Asymmetric is required at one end, while Symmetric is something that is required at both ends of the connection. Encompassed in these categories are different methods such as Caching, Compression, Load Balancing, Route Optimization, Protocol Optimization, and Quality of Service (QoS). These methods are applied in the applications to escalate their performance.
Caching involves placing frequently requested content in a closer location such as a cache on a local server. This increases application response time, manages server load and consumption of bandwidth. Caching is useful for dynamic data. Compression is a technique that enables to reduce transit time for given data to traverse over the network. Data compression and bandwidth compression substantially optimize data transmission over the network. Compression can be both symmetric and asymmetric. Load balancing is the process of distributing data across a computer network to maximize network efficiency from a link loading point of view. Load balancers offer resilience and scalability, improving overall performance. Route Optimization is the process of choosing the most efficient path through analyzing performance between routes and network devices, and sending data in that path. This enables users to have faster application response and data delivery. Protocol Optimization is used for accelerating user response time. Enterprises face latency problems and Web-application delays consistently; optimization of protocols will increase performance. Quality of Service (QoS) is prioritization of IP traffic based on the criticality of applications. This technique is applied for determining which data packets are to be transmitted first over the network.
Application acceleration is an integral component of WAN optimization and related network enhancement technologies. Leading vendors in the technology marketplace offer customers superior solutions to optimize their network infrastructure. FatPipe Networks (www.fatpipe.com) is the provider of solutions for WAN optimization, bandwidth management, reliability, and security. FatPipe is capable of taking multiple WAN connections and load balancing outbound and inbound traffic across all the connections using its patented MPSec technology. It also provides Traffic prioritization and bandwidth management is using its unique Quality of Service (QoS) module.
WAN Application Acceleration
