Abstract

This white paper examines and discusses the key elements of Application Traffic Management: Monitoring, Bandwidth Management and Compression. Packeteer commissioned The Tolly Group to evaluate how the compression and bandwidth management offered by Packeteer can improve network performance by increasing performance of narrowband WAN links. Tolly Group engineers constructed a test network using a PacketShaper Xpress 8500, a system that provides application-intelligent bandwidth management and, when deployed in pairs, data compression/decompression.

Engineers used different application types to determine the PacketShaper Xpress 8500’s impact on link utilization – interactive Citrix Systems, Inc. MetaFrame traffic vying for bandwidth against HTTP file transfer background traffic. Engineers tested the effect of compression alone on application traffic, the effect of bandwidth management alone on application traffic and the effect on application traffic when both are used in concert.