Riverbed - Companies of all sizes depend on Riverbed Steelhead appliances to accelerate

the performance of applications over wide area networks. Steelhead appliances deliver the highest performance, most scalable wide-area data services solution available, overcoming
both bandwidth and latency problems simultaneously. With Steelhead appliances, data moves
faster, applications perform seamlessly, and IT managers can deploy a simpler, more effective
network infrastructure. The possibilities are endless.

Steelhead appliances have dramatically changed expectations when it comes to application performance over the WAN. With Steelhead appliances, IT departments can meet the expectations of the most demanding users while still achieving their own strategic objectives. Enterprises can now provide LAN-like performance to users anywhere in the world - while consolidating previously distributed servers and storage, reducing remote backup infrastructure, and even cutting bandwidth expenses.

Key Benefits

1- Acceleration of all applications.
Riverbed® Steelhead appliances deliver dramatic performance increases across the
Wide Area Network (WAN) for all TCP applications, by 5 to 50 times, or as much as 100 times.
Distributed teams can collaborate more effectively by getting updated files and emails in
seconds instead of minutes or hours. QoS functionality enables additional optimizations for
UDP applications such as VolP and video, and all TCP-based applications as well.

 

2- Consolidation of IT infrastructure.
Steel head appliances enable the consolidation of file servers, Exchange servers, storage,
application servers, and tape backup systems from remote branches into data centers, without
giving up the performance users need.

 

3- Reduced bandwidth utilization.
Steelhead appliances enable massive reductions in bandwidth utilization. Customers typically
eliminate 60% to 95% of their current utilization after deploying Steelhead appliances.

 

4- Accelerated, simplified backup and replication.
With Steelhead appliances, secure backups over the WAN can take minutes instead of hours,
enabling shorter backup windows and the ability to eliminate remote backup infrastructure
such as tape backup equipment and dedicated backup servers

 

5- The Riverbed Optimization System [RiDS"]
RiGS software powers Steel head appliances. RiGS combines patent-pending data reduction, TCP optimization, application-level latency optimizations, and remote office file and management functionality. Together, these technologies provide a comprehensive solution for enterprise wide area data services. RiGS consists of four key components:

 

• Data Streamlining - RiGS Data Streamlining works across all TCP applications to reduce bandwidth consumption, typically by 60% to 95%. Data Streamlining works across file sharing (including Windows and NFS), email (including MS Exchange and Lotus Notes), CAD, ERP, databases, and all other applications that use TCP. Data Streamlining also provides QoS for
bandwidth prioritization, enabling additional performance benefits for all TCP and UDP applications.

• Application Streamlining - RiGSApplication Streamlining provides additional order-ofmagnitude application performance improvements by reducing application protocol chattiness up to 98% and minimizing application overhead. By doing so, RiGScan provide massive throughput increases to applications including file sharing (CIFSand NFS), Exchange (MAP!),
Web (HTIP), and database (MSSQL). RiGS also includes additional features for disconnected operations and data pre-population.

• Transport Streamlining - RiOS Transport Streamlining reduces the number of TCP packets required to transfer data by 65% to 98%. RiOS Transport Streamlining also enables greater utilization of high bandwidth, high latency connections with High-Speed TCP capabilities.

• Management Streamlining - RiOS simplifies the deployment and management ofapplication acceleration infrastructure by employing a transparent approach to communications. RiOS enables easy deployment through auto-discovery of peers and autointerception of traffic, with no reconfiguration of clients, servers, or routers necessary. RiOS simplifies ongoing management by providing simple but powerful Web-based and command line interfaces, reporting, and configuration. RiOS also enables additional management features including many deployment configurations, redundancy, IPsec encryption, RADIUSfTACACS+ authentication, and SNMP traps.