Overcoming the Challenges of WAN Application Delivery

ECESSA
White Paper
Overcoming the Challenges
of WAN Application
DeliveryWhite Paper
Today's small-to-medium size enterprises (SME) rely heavily on their business applications being sent reliably over the Internet, outside of their LAN. These applications can include inventory, customer relationship management, sales, accounting and other critical applications that are the livelihood of a company's operations. Therefore, quick and reliable delivery of these applications to users is a major challenge for today's IT departments. To achieve greater productivity, local employees, telecommuters, business partners and customers must all have unhindered access to critical applications. Any delay in delivering these applications, or deficiency in the availability and security of the applications, can cause user productivity to suffer and adversely affect business PowerLink users can setup profitability.QoS rules which determine bandwidth minimums and Difficulties aboundmaximums for specific ap- When it comes to delivering applications over the WAN, there are many obstacles to overcome. plications based on proto- Lack of sufficient bandwidth and latency issues result in low throughput and long delays. Slow or col type, source port, desti- difficult to use remote access applications can also attribute to lost productivity, while insufficient security can put private data and the applications themselves at risk.nation port, and source IPs. Obstacles to efficient application delivery over the WAN. Relying on a single ISP for network connectivity is dangerous. Getting enough bandwidth to support business-critical applications can be expensive. Getting enough bandwidth to support mission-critical applications can be hard to manage. Lack of planning for complete application performance over the WAN
Solving the WAN application delivery challenge: why traditional products fall shortAs is the case with many organizations, IT personnel find themselves bogged down in addressing poorly performing WAN networks. Rather than solving the problem with the most cost-effective and efficient solution, they often resort to adding more bandwidth, which really doesn't solve the problem. After applications have been deployed over the WAN, the expectation is that the months of planning and trials would deliver a successful rollout. Unfortunately, problems come about when the application is rolled out to the whole user population. Today, there are many solutions available that affordably address problems associated with delivery of critical applications over the WAN.While many applications may be customized in order to take advantage of the business processes and optimize user productivity, when the applications are deployed over the WAN, the application performance often degrades, causing user productivity to suffer, adversely effecting the bottom-line. Unfortunately, many performance issues are identified as network problems, even if the network infrastructure is performing well for other applications. Some of the areas that can adversely affect applications over the WAN include:. Poor WAN link performance. ISP link failure. Congestion from too much traffic going over the WAN link
Intelligent WAN and ISP link aggregation, load balancing and failover: more than just a dual WAN routerA dual WAN router uses simple policies to "route outbound-only traffic" over one of two lines. There is no intelligence in the technique and no method to avoid or minimize congestion. In fact, the rigid nature of the technique frequently adds to congestion problems and does nothing in terms of WAN and ISP link load balancing. Dual WAN routers are incapable of failover for inbound traffic, leaving inbound services susceptible to outages. This can cause lost revenue associated with downed e-commerce sites, or lost productivity from remote offices with users losing access across VPNs.A more cost-efficient and flexible solution is using specialized WAN optimization controllers that provide ISP multi-homing and WAN link load balancing and failover. These products are hardened
2 Overcoming the Challenges of WAN Application DeliveryWhite Paper
appliances that are located between firewalls and WAN gateway devices, and use a simplified and more up-to-date architecture often based on Network Address Translation (NAT) and Domain Names Service (DNS).
The advantages of an integrated WAN optimization ... [download for more]