What is WAN accelerator?

A wide area network accelerator (WAN accelerator) is a hardware component, software, or appliance executing in a virtualized environment that provides caching and optimization of WAN services. A WAN accelerator is also called a WAN optimizer or application accelerator.

WAN accelerators are deployed to improve network performance over long-distance connections by reducing bandwidth usage and minimizing latency for data transmission across wide area networks.

Working Principle

A WAN accelerator provides services to speed up information flow between end users for imparting better network experience. Its primary target is to reduce the data volume to be transmitted through several optimization techniques:

• Data compression − Reduces the size of data packets before transmission

• Data deduplication − Eliminates redundant data by storing unique data segments only once

• Caching − Stores frequently accessed data locally to avoid repeated transmissions

• Protocol optimization − Optimizes network protocols to reduce overhead and improve efficiency

The accelerator caches duplicate data and sends references of them when they are needed multiple times instead of resending the entire data repeatedly.

Deployment of WAN Accelerators

For enabling WAN accelerator technologies, WAN accelerators need to be deployed at each end of the communicating parties close to their backup repositories. The typical deployment setup involves:

• Source WAN accelerator − Stores data along with control information for global deduplication

• Destination WAN accelerator − Stores global cache data and reconstructs original data

• Symmetric deployment − Both ends must have accelerators for bidirectional optimization

Key Benefits

Conclusion

WAN accelerators significantly improve network performance by reducing data volume through compression, deduplication, and caching techniques. They require symmetric deployment at both ends of the WAN connection to provide optimal bidirectional acceleration and enhanced user experience across wide area networks.