What do WAN Accelerators work

WAN optimization or WAN acceleration is a suite of techniques that provides WAN caching and optimization services. A type of hardware or software application, it is used to increase speed and improve the efficiency of data transfer across wide-area networks (WANs) to improve the end user’s experience. It is a crucial part of maintaining efficient performance for business-critical applications that cross the WAN.

What technologies optimize network performance?

WAN acceleration relieves network congestion through multiple bandwidth preservation techniques. These are applied by devices (virtual, or hardware) at either end of the network. These are often known as WAN Optimization Controllers (WOCs). These WAN technology techniques used by different WAN accelerators include:

  • Data deduplication is a method of significantly reducing data transmitted by replacing redundant copies of data with small references. Limiting the amount of data that is transmitted across a network can save large amounts of money in bandwidth costs and increase the speed and responsiveness of the network.
  • Compression is similar to deduplication in that it reduces the amount of data transmitted across the network, but operates on smaller amounts of data. Enterprises implementing compression technology can see around 50% improvement in WAN utilization, which is comparable to doubling the efficiency of WAN bandwidth.
  • Caching is another method that works to reduce bandwidth usage. Caching stores frequently accessed data locally so that future requests for that data are sped up by not having to be retransmitted across the network. This method helps applications perform significantly faster.
  • Protocol acceleration techniques boost protocol performance across the network, specifically in terms of lessening latency caused by inefficient protocol operation.

Why are WAN accelerators important?

Few IT professionals would dispute the fact that network congestion and connectivity issues cost money. For example, take an organization that relies on Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) links to connect offices to data or applications within the organization’s data center or company headquarters. WAN acceleration enables more efficient bandwidth use to boost application performance without significantly increasing spend on expensive links.

WAN acceleration is also crucial in enhancing user experience by maximizing bandwidth, moving content closer to clients, and providing faster connection to resources like portals, applications, and CRM databases. This leads to quicker data sourcing and optimized application performance. Put simply, having to wait for information is frustrating. WAN optimization consolidates network traffic and optimizes bandwidth so that users can work without frustrating delays.

What are the benefits of a WAN accelerator?

As already noted, WAN acceleration plays an important role in boosting network performance and speeding up large data transfers without needing to incur additional costs on expensive hardware and software. More specifically, end-users, even those who do not necessarily understand the technology behind WAN optimization, can expect to benefit in any number of ways, which include:

  • Quicker file accessibility: if someone accesses the same file frequently, caching means that the stored item can be accessed quicker as reloading the full document is not necessary.
  • Facilitates remote working: by maximizing the network speed between remote offices, remote workers, and business headquarters, employees benefit from quicker file transfer and network-based communications such as email. Boosting network performance also works to accelerate Microsoft 365 and other cloud-based services.
  • Improved performance: applications that do not directly use optimization still benefit from faster run-time because bandwidth that had been occupied by other processes can now be dedicated to the most critical applications.
  • Improved ERP Performance: By improving network connections, WAN acceleration speeds up access to your ERP system. In a use case, this means that a report that once took fifteen minutes to download now takes as little as 20 seconds.
  • Faster and more reliable data recovery: recovering servers and applications after crashing can be a lengthy process. By optimizing the network, businesses are able to regain access to critical applications much more quickly, thanks to faster backup and restore, resulting in boosted productivity.
  • Cost efficiency: Virtual WAN acceleration enables application merging that can significantly reduce the cost of equipment and software. It also allows businesses to lower operation costs by improving user productivity and increasing the number of users supported by each IT employee.

Although the benefits of WAN acceleration are clear, implementing and maintaining WAN acceleration can be complicated. Luckily, this is where Replify is different. One of the only vendors that have the ability to deeply integrate into a customer’s existing product range, Replify offers portability so that customers and OEM partners can rapidly deploy on existing infrastructure, in turn reducing major pain points for DevOps.

About Replify – WAN Accelerator software 

Many years of experience in software-based acceleration gives Replify an advantage over other WAN-optimized solutions as it offers end-to-end optimization over the last mile directly to end-user devices, which is particularly useful for remote workers. Replify’s software-based approach gives WAN Optimization customers the flexibility to deploy on a wide range of hypervisors, containers, and cloud platforms. Replify’s WAN optimization solutions can provide reductions in bandwidth usage and improvements in application performance for a faster and smoother way of working.

Learn more about how Replify’s WAN acceleration solutions are providing a transformative way of working for organizations and employees all over the world. Get in touch or download a free WAN accelerator trial today.