WAN Acceleration
The terms WAN optimizer and WAN accelerators cover a wide assortment of vendors and products — all designed to improve the performance characteristics of a network. While most work at Layer 4, some specifically function at the application layer. One vendor which comes to mind is Riverbed Technology, which recently was recognized as an industry leader in the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Report for WAN Optimization Controllers. Riverbed uses three techniques to enhance network performance, including: transport streamlining, data streamlining and application streamlining. The first two techniques are similar to techniques described above which operate at Layer 4; application streamlining is completely different. Application streamlining modules eliminate upcoming round trips that would have been generated by the application protocol. Reducing round trips can be necessary even with a very efficient implementation of TCP, because otherwise the inefficiency of the application-level protocol can overwhelm any improvements made at the transport layer. Application streamlining modules can eliminate up to 98 percent of the round trips taken by specific applications, such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Oracle 11i, delivering a significant improvement in throughput in addition to what data streamlining and transport streamlining already provide.
Conclusion
Overall network latency is the combination of propagation delay and processing delay. If moving from a geosynchronous satellite to one in low-Earth or medium-Earth orbit is not an option, the only other way to minimize latency is to reduce processing delay. Map out a detailed network diagram and evaluate the processing delay associated with every device. Keep in mind that there are options which may shave significant time off the latency you are experiencing, thereby improving network performance.
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