Adaptive Private Networking - RAID for WANs

Wouldn’t you love to be able to lower your WAN costs, increase bandwidth significantly, create four 9s reliability, speed up applications and also run VoIP and video using cheap Internet connections, such as ADSL, Cable and fixed broadband wireless?

I know, the answer is a resounding…YES!

I have discovered a technology for you that will achieve, what I call:

“The Holy Grail of Wide Area Networking”

I’m constantly sifting through new technology to find ones that truly have a huge impact on network environments. When I do find one, I play devil’s advocate to find holes in the solution, reasons why its value might be minimized or ways that the solution will do more harm than good. If the solution is able to get through this stage, it’s time to actually put the solution to the test.

Well, I did just that and I have a technology for you that completely blew me away when I saw it in action. As you already know, this doesn’t happen very often in the IT world. Sure, we’ve seen amazing technologies such as VMware and Riverbed make networks and applications far more efficient and manageable and that’s why we have both of those solutions as part of our portfolio at Tredent.

I believe that the technology in this video takes wide area networking to a whole new level. Watch the video below, then we will dive into a few of our test results and some specific scenarios where this solution could make a big impact.

Let me set the stage for you…We tested the solution with varying types of WAN links, emulation factors and other devices in the mix to really see if we could break the technology and to truly see where it can help network environments.

Here is the setup…We used an Apposite Linktropy WAN emulation appliance to simulate the 2 routers in the diagram below. Luckily, the Talari T700 appliances were amazingly simple to install and configure, so it didn’t take us very long to set up our lab environment.

Lab Test #1

Step 1 - We transfered (CIFS) a 34mb executable file (.exe) from the server to the PC. We had the Talari T700s and the Riverbed Steelhead appliances turned off (they both fail to wire) - The transfer time was 15 minutes and 27 seconds

We deleted the file on the PC and moved to step 2

Step 2 - We transfered the same 34mb exe file again from the server to the PC. We had the Talari T700s appliances turned off and the Riverbed Steelhead appliances on with a cleared data-store (no data has been seen by the Steelhead)
The transfer time was 13 minutes and 20 seconds

You see the slight reduction in transfer time because even with a cold transfer you get LZ compression (Lempel-Ziv) on the transfer.

Step 3 - After deleting the file from the PC again we transfered the same 34mb exe file with the Talari T700s turned on and the Steelhead appliances on with a clean data-store (we cleared the data-store and restarted the appliances)
The transfer time was 5 minutes and 29 seconds

That’s amazing…

Why?…This is not a WAN / application acceleration solution!

Step 4 - With file deleted from PC again we transfered the same 34mb exe file. This time we turned the Talari T700s off and we left the Steelhead data-store warm (seen the data already)
The transfer time was only 30 seconds.

This is the magic of the Riverbed Steelhead appliances and the reason most IT professionals are doing everything they can to buy them for their network, but it gets a lot better…

Step 5 - Deleted file on PC. Transfered 34mb exe again with both the Talari T700s and Steelhead appliances (warm data-store) on.
The transfer time was only 14 seconds!

The Talari appliances cut the Riverbed warm transfer in half!

So why is this significant?

When Steelhead appliances have already seen the data they are serving up the bits locally to the PC while receiving 16k data reference packets telling it which bits to serve up to the application (in this case CIFS). This means that very little traffic is even traversing the WAN at all. What’s happening is that the Talari T700s are optimizing (via its WAN parity algorithm over multiple links) the Steelhead to Steelhead traffic.

Essentially, its creating a ZERO loss network environment.

Also, this was only one transmission. Imagine the impact of this solution when you have 10, 50, 100 or even 1000 users in a production environment. That’s powerful!

The best part is that this is only one feature of the Talari solution.

(We performed the same test on other file types to ensure that the results were similar as above and they were.)

Lab Test #2

As mentioned in the video above, Talari’s technology helps VoIP and Video traffic tremendously without the need for QoS or CoS over the WAN environment.

With the test above we have already set the ground work for the second test.

In this test we simply set up a VoIP call with the Steelheads and Talari’s turned OFF. The call was experiencing the 5% packet loss across the 2 ADSL links. (this is detrimental to voice calls, clipping etc). This is common when trying to run voice over standard Internet connections.

At this point we turned on the 2 Talari T700s…

After they booted up the loss on the links vanished!

You are probably thinking what I was the first time a saw this in action…

How the hell are they doing that?

Zero loss with UDP over cheap ADSL Internet links! That is magic!

Here is a small secret…

Talari is able to send duplicate UDP packets across multiple paths. Then on the other end the first packet wins and the duplicate packet is dropped which creates a zero loss environment for VoIP and video traffic over these low cost Internet connections.

Oh…and one other small piece of information I forgot to tell you. We still had the Steelheads turned off and we were transferring the 34mb exe file during lab test #2.

We have only touched the tip of the iceberg here…

I would encourage you to take advantage of our FREE evaluation offering of the APN solution so we can really dive into this phenomenal technology so you can understand its tremendous impact to your network environment. I can guarantee that you will not be disappointed!

GET YOUR FREE EVALUATION NOW

Here are a few network scenarios that will get you thinking about how you can use this technology:

• Have MPLS in place and want to add cheap broadband connection for backup to your MPLS? (with Talari the back up is used all the time creating four 9s reliability)
• Have MPLS in place and already have a backup connection? Add Talari, make it active-active and now you have the bandwidth to add video or other applications that wouldn’t run across your current private links.
• Already have a VPN environment and have not yet jumped into the MPLS boat? Add another low cost Internet connection and now there is no need for MPLS to run your real-time traffic (VoIP and video)
• At the end of your MPLS contract and looking for a way to get more bandwidth, more reliability at a much lower price point while still being able to run your real-time apps?

The scenarios go on and on…

Ok. I could talk about this technology for a long time as you can tell already…LOL

We are just scratching the surface. Imagine what this could do for applications like Citrix, RDP, database, internal web applications, etc!

GET YOUR FREE EVALUATION NOW