What is Network Acceleration?

Network acceleration is a set of techniques used to increase the speed of information flow between end users, providing better network performance and user experience. It is also known as WAN optimization or WAN acceleration.

Network acceleration becomes crucial when organizations need to optimize data transfer across wide area networks, especially for applications like file transfers, video conferencing, and cloud services that require high bandwidth and low latency.

Techniques Used in Network Acceleration

• Traffic Shaping − Priority is assigned to network traffic based on which bandwidth is allocated to ensure critical applications receive adequate resources.

• Data Deduplication and Caching − Duplicate data is cached locally, and only references are sent for additional requests of the same data. This significantly reduces data volume for remote backups, replication, and disaster recovery operations.

• Compression − Data size is reduced through various compression algorithms to minimize bandwidth usage and transfer time.

• Protocol Optimization − High-performance protocols are implemented to provide better throughput even in impaired networks. These protocols enable low-overhead retransmission and forward error correction to handle packet loss efficiently.

• Protocol Spoofing − Multiple small, related protocols are consolidated into a single protocol to reduce overhead and improve efficiency.

• Network Monitoring − Non-essential traffic is identified and managed appropriately to prioritize business-critical applications.

• Policy Enforcement − Rules governing downloads and internet usage are implemented and enforced to maintain network performance.

Network Accelerators

Network acceleration is implemented by deploying network accelerators, also called WAN accelerators. These can be hardware appliances, software applications, or virtualized solutions running in cloud environments.

WAN accelerators are typically deployed at both ends of the communication path − near the source and destination networks. The source WAN accelerator stores data along with control information for global deduplication, while the destination WAN accelerator maintains global cache data to serve future requests efficiently.

Advantages

• Reduced bandwidth costs − Less data transmission means lower bandwidth requirements and costs.

• Improved application performance − Faster data transfer results in better user experience and productivity.

• Enhanced backup efficiency − Deduplication and compression significantly reduce backup times and storage requirements.

Common Use Cases

Network acceleration is particularly beneficial for organizations with distributed offices, cloud migrations, disaster recovery implementations, and applications requiring frequent large file transfers across wide area networks.

Conclusion

Network acceleration optimizes data flow through techniques like compression, deduplication, and traffic shaping. By deploying WAN accelerators strategically, organizations can significantly improve network performance while reducing bandwidth costs and enhancing user experience.