Compression Depression

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 18 June 2009 05:00

Business IT - Technology

Network traffic compression is becoming increasingly an issue for corporations looking to squeeze as much bang-for-buck from their IT departments as possible.  With WAN acceleration as an offshoot, this real life example shows ways in which bandwidth can be better utilised to deliver high rates of data at good speeds.  Effective WAN capacity can be multiplied with a relatively cheap solution, such as the Juniper WX range of devices, but there are pitfalls.

So I was thinking recently, how indeed will the proposed Xbox 360 high definition movie streaming work in a country like Australia?  How can we shove down the pipe, the equivalent of many people’s monthly ISP cap within the space of a two hour movie, and deliver that at a speed that makes it watchable?

Then I realised, where I had seen this before, using Juniper sequence reduction devices in the corporate environments.

This is not an ad, I am sure other manufactures of network devices have similar solutions, what follows however is my experience with the Juniper WX range (formally Peribit WR and SR boxes) of compression and WAN acceleration hardware.

The Juniper WX range is sold based on network capacity, with the important thing to remember that it is the outgoing (I.E. compressed data) that is important for the licensing.  They are also limited by how many tunnels they can establish, more on that in a moment.

The WXC range is also marketed in this way, with the main difference being the addition of a hard drive to the device, this allows for greater string length storage capacity, with the follow on effect being greater efficiency in compression.

A quick overview of network positioning is important in this discussion.

The diagram below shows a typical setup with the compression units being installed in-line behind the routers.  From experience we have found putting your WX compression unit’s off-path (hanging off the switch) and as far ‘back’ in your WAN as you can manage is best.  The advantages are the ability to change out the equipment without disrupting your network, and also getting compressed data to traverse as much of your network as possible.