Riverbed Technology Inc. Steelhead 1010 Appliance WAN Traffic Optimization and Acceleration Evaluation
Sponsor: Riverbed Technology, Inc.
All Reports Sponsored by this Vendor
Document Number: 205109
Publication Date: 5/3/2005
Page Count: 8
Abstract
Riverbed Technology, Inc. commissioned The Tolly Group to evaluate the performance of its Steelhead 1010 WAN Traffic Optimization and Acceleration appliance. Engineers established the degree to which the Steelhead appliance can improve perceived performance of applications accessing data remotely.
Tolly Group engineers specifically focused on two key metrics: (1) effective WAN throughput, and (2) transfer time (time to complete) – that is, measuring the how much greater the effective WAN connection is, and showing how much the “wait” times for data can be reduced – especially when the data sent has previously been processed by the Steelhead 1010. Tests were implemented during March 2005 at Riverbed Technology’s lab in San Francisco, CA and audited by Tolly Group personnel.
Results show that the Steelhead 1010 delivers significant increases in both the effective WAN link capacity and the application throughput across various simulated circuits tested especially when handling requests for data files previously processed by the appliance – so called “warm” data. Tests results indicate that the combination of compression, remote-side data storage, and protocol acceleration results in a sizable reduction in the amount of data transiting a WAN link when compared to bandwidth consumption over a baseline WAN application environment without the Steelhead 1010. Moreover, the Steelhead 1010 speeded up file transfers from 3X in a “cold” – or first time transfer to up to over 170X faster in a “warm” run than without Steelhead appliances across the various test scenarios.