WAN optimization with Riverbed

Today I had a chance to work with a product for WAN optimization for the first time. I ran a live demo at a customers site.

	It works. At least if your network traffic is predictable and repetitive. Most networks are, as clients tend to do much of the same.
	It is too expensive for most customers. It is really hard to justify the cost and more importantly the return of investment.

Acceleration of SSL traffic

Rivedbed promised to support SSL in version 4 of their software. I can't wait to try this one out. It only requires you to install your private key on the box inside your datacenter.

Steelhead appliances now accelerate encrypted (SSL) traffic, using all of Riverbed's algorithms to deliver LAN-like performance for those key business applications.

Of course this won't work for external web sites as you don't have access to private keys. But for intranet applications this is cool!

Exchange 2007

Exchange 2007 supports encrypted MAPI connections. Much details on this issue is not known at this point.

Based on our testing, we've found that the encrypted connections that appear by default in an Exchange 2007 environment with Outlook 2007 clients are a proprietary "MAPI encryption", not SSL.

Impression

Riverbed Steelhead appliances are easy to set up and work without the need to do much. Just make sure the traffic is unencrypted and leave the rest to Riverbed.

RiOS 4.0

I will do a new lab with RiOS 4.0 when it is released and do tests on Exchange, Sharepoint and web traffic. All SSL encrypted. If you are curious about this, please leave me a note.