RE: [SAGE] TCP Window Tuning for High Bandwidth/High Latency WANlinks?

[Doug Hughes <doug@eng.auburn.edu>]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, John LLOYD wrote:

>
>
>
> > 1. tune the TCP settings on each host for all connections, which may
> >    impact memory usage and won't do much of LAN connections if at all.
>
> Getting this to actually work is nontrivial.  Having just one platform helps a lot.
>
>
> > 2. turn the TCP window size on a per-server (ftp, ssh) and per-client
> >    basis (ncftp, scp, etc).  Then training the users if the tuning
> >    isn't automatic how to use it...
> >
> > 3. Get a network box which will do this for us (yet more money...)
> >    auto-magically at each site.  One option, which I have pricing on
> >    at all is:
> >
> > 	http://www.internap.com/products/FCP-solution.htm
> >
> >    Though we won't be multi-homed in our WAN/VLAN setup at this time,
> >    too much money.
>
>
> There was a review of network boxes in Network Computing a while ago...October?  One consultant website lists a bunch of vendors... http://www.gen2ventures.com/WAN%20Opt%20Workshop.htm
>
> Packeteer is the leading vendor but they cost a bundle.  One of the vendor sites has an IDC report naming most of the other vendors too; look for it probably on the Packeteer site.  There is a bunch of consolidation going on in this market space so be wary of product line terminations as companies are bought up.

Oh! I forgot to mention some of the appliances we've been testing.
There are several of them that, if you do a lot of recurring transfers
of similar data, they can memorize these chunks and just retransmit
a market in place resulting in a lot of savings. Of course, if your
traffic isn't similar, you don't gain a lot.

webspy.com (aka exinda.com - compression appliance)
peribit (bought by juniper)
HyperIP appliance (netex.com)
and swanlabs.

All have different ways of approaching it. All use appliances on both
ends. Some use redundancy protocols that interoperate with cisco,
some use a cut-through model for device failure (failed looks like
gige or 100mbit copper port). Some tunnel using a reserved protocol
(e.g. swanlabs - tunnel both ip and udp over their own reserved protocol
like a vpn).

swanlabs uses a single tcp/ip port to tunnel stuff

hyperip uses 2 devices on each and and sets up like failover. You can
have it out of line on the same net.

They are all pretty expensive, but can reduce your monthly recurring
costs for bandwidth consumption.

(We've evaluated 2 and are checking into a 3rd)

	Doug