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There are many ways of going about WAN Optimization. Choose the one that’s just right for you
Software major Patni Computer Systems realized that pumping bandwidth was not a solution to increasing the efficiency and utilization of its wide area network (WAN). To ensure optimized use of its bandwidth resource available over the WAN, the company therefore decided to deploy an application for WAN optimization from Peribit. The benefits for the company-which has 21 sales offices across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific, and multiple offshore development centers across eight cities in India-were several.
“The solution improved the response times of our critical web-based and e-mail applications. It also optimized bandwidth usage, and we were able to achieve up to 80 percent HTTP compression,” reveals Vinod Sadavarte, CIO of Patni. The payback period for the WAN optimized solution was less than a year.
Need for optimization
Though large organizations with a vast geographical reach have recognized the value of an optimized WAN environment and deployed solutions around it, the technology is still in the initial stages of adoption in India.
“The market for WAN optimization products is still maturing in the country. By 2008, more Indian enterprises will look seriously at such solutions,” opines Nareshchandra Singh, Principal Research Analyst
at Gartner.
According to Gartner Strategic Planning Assumption (GSPA), by 2008, investing in WAN optimization solutions will be the primary WAN upgrade strategy for 75 percent of enterprises worldwide.
One of the primary drivers for WAN optimized solutions is the increasing deployment of new business applications in the enterprise. Server consolidation and network latency issues are the other factors driving WAN optimization.
“On one hand you introduce new business applications and on the other you have bandwidth-choking applications like streaming video. Previously, bandwidth compression was an option, but with falling bandwidth costs compression becomes costly,” points out Sanjay Kharade, Principal Consultant, Cisco India and Saarc.
Reports suggest that compression techniques should not be applied to Voice over IP because codecs used to transmit voice traffic over the WAN already compress the packets using G.729a compression technology. “G.729a compresses the packets in the ratio of 1:8 at the switch level. Additional compression could compromise voice quality,” reveals the CIO of a Delhi-based, international voice BPO on condition of anonymity. Through the combined usage of switches and multiplexers over the WAN, this BPO unit has achieved savings of 25-35 percent.
Gartner’s Singh says that previously enterprises had a legacy of VSAT links for connectivity. Even today, where leased connectivity is not available, wireless is still required. “Wireless connectivity increases latency in the network because the data travels through multiple hops to reach the final destination,” explains Singh.
There is a common belief within the industry that increasing network bandwidth will not improve performance and reduce latency on the network. Those in the know opine that file system protocols such as Common Internet File System (CIFS) and Network File System were not designed for the WAN environment. On the other hand, TCP/IP is not an efficient WAN protocol as it treats all traffic equally.
“This results in bandwidth crunch coupled with delay and is a major issue with the TCP/IP protocol,” says Sajan Paul, Head-Technology and Consulting, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel. Thus, ERP users would compete equally with web surfers and P2P users for the added bandwidth without any guarantee of performance improvement for anyone.
For example, when a file is opened, there are numerous handshakes and acknowledgements are sent between the client and server. A file that could open in a second on a local area network (LAN) would take minutes to open on the WAN. This WAN latency prevents centralization and consolidation of key branch office file, e-mail, print, web, network and management servers.
According to GSPA, through 2007, 90 percent of the networks that do not address protocol latency issues will not meet business-critical application service levels.
“Web-based applications or applications linked via satellite lack the performance which can be achieved over a LAN. I have been told that some devices increase WAN performance by 30-40 percent, which is a significant improvement,” comments Shirish Gariba, VP, IT, Elbee Express. Though Elbee is not using any WAN optimization products at present, the company is ready to explore them as and when the need arises.
A report from IDC suggests that every year many large enterprises spend more than $ 20 million on WAN circuits. In such organizations, even a 5 percent increase in WAN link upgrades translates to $ 1 million every year in additional operational costs with an unpredictable return on investment (RoI).
“IT managers have realized that they do not have control of content over the bandwidth. There is no way to measure quality of service parameters on the network,” says Avnish Datt, Country Manager, India, Orange Business Services.
WAN plan
WAN costs are inevitable, and while it may not be practical to reduce these costs, it is certainly possible and necessary to control costs in the future with an effective WAN optimization plan.
“The pain-point for CIOs is to improve response time for WAN applications. They want to bring down the response time from say 60 milliseconds to 30 milliseconds,” notes Kharade.
There are a number of players in the market, both from the software and hardware segment, with products to ensure that bandwidth on the WAN is managed efficiently. Some of these products are priority-based. For example, access to an ERP application in an enterprise would feature high on the list while e-mail browsing could have low priority.
“Better use of the existing infrastructure is the best way for enterprises to handle WAN optimization. Making your WAN application-centric is another way of optimizing the WAN link,” comments Ponnanna Uthappa, Head, Uptime Assurance Services and Marketing, Team Computers. Voice is a critical application for a BPO organization, so an unstable WAN link would directly impact revenues. For a bank a critical application would be a core banking solution.
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