Tunneling Protocols

Silver Peak Improves the Performance of Any Tunneling Protocol over Distance

Don’t sacrifice application performance for the convenience of connecting locations with L2TP, GRE or any other tunneling protocol. Silver Peak optimizes every application, even when encapsulated within a tunnel.  Replicate data, synchronize databases, move files – regardless of the task, Silver Peak can accelerate it over the WAN by as much as 20X or more. 

Tunneling protocols, such a GRE and L2TP, are common tools for interconnecting two similar networks over a different network. But regardless of the protocol, tunneling presents a challenge for application performance over distance.

The tunneling protocol itself is susceptible to the limited throughput, high packet loss and out-of-order packets (OOPs) rates endemic to long-distance connections. The protocols running within the tunnel are exposed to these same problems, but cannot be optimized through common application acceleration techniques as the encapsulation process masks the tunneled application from most application acceleration devices. IPSec, often used to secure tunneled traffic, may also increase delay due to increased packet fragmentation.

Silver Peak addresses the problems undermining tunneling performance without any protocol tweaking or custom configuration. All tunneling protocols are secured and optimized, regardless of whether they run over IP, UDP, TCP or a proprietary IP-based protocol. The same is true with the applications that run across these protocols. More specifically, Silver Peak applies these technologies to the following performance challenges: 

  • Bandwidth – Silver Peak byte-level deduplication removes redundant tunneling protocol data from the WAN. The first time the tunneling protocol sends data it is fingerprinted and compressed by Silver Peak. Subsequent requests are fulfilled by the local Silver Peak instance.  
  • Latency – Silver Peak mitigates latency enabling tunneling protocols to operate more efficiently over distance. TCP Acceleration includes windows scaling, selective acknowledgements, and HighSpeed TCP. CIFS Acceleration includes CIFS read-ahead, CIFS write-behind, and CIFS metadata optimizations. Latency is also reduced through packet coalescing, which re-packages multiple smaller packets into a single larger one, and through Dynamic Path Control, which selects the fastest path to a remote location.
  • Congestion – Silver Peak makes tunneling protocol performance more predictable across congested WANs. Lost packets are reconstituted in real-time at the far end of a WAN link, avoiding delays that come with multiple round-trip retransmissions. Out-of-order packets are resequenced, avoiding retransmission and processing delays that occur when packets arrive out-of-order.

Silver Peak protects all data in-flight between locations with an Accelerated IPSec virtual private network (VPN) running AES-256, the enterprise standard for data encryption. Data-at-rest within Silver Peak instances is also encrypted with AES. End-to-end encryption is provided by SSL/TLS.

Silver Peak offers the most scalable and cost-effective data acceleration software for connecting data centers, remote offices and the cloud. Download and deploy it yourself in just 20 minutes or contact us to see how Silver Peak can help your team.

Featured Products

  • VX WAN Optimization Software

    VX Virtual WAN Optimization Software

    Silver Peak VX WAN optimization software supports the full list of Silver Peak WAN optimization features. Use Silver Peak VX software to build a Silver Peak Unity WAN fabric for integrating your enterprise WAN, the Internet and the cloud, and to optimize every SaaS application.

  • NX WAN Optimization Appliances

    NX Appliances for Application Acceleration and Replication Acceleration

    Silver Peak NX WAN optimization appliances are the industry's highest-performance WAN optimization solutions, delivering three-times the WAN performance and capacity of the nearest competing products. Silver Peak Software for Life program means you can convert NX appliances to VX software at anytime for free.

  • Unity Architecture: Building an SD-WAN Fabric

    Silver Peak Unity is the premier solution for broadband and hybrid WANs.

Benefits

  • Avoid or delay expensive WAN bandwidth upgradesby eliminating redundant application traffic from a long-distance tunneled connection.
  • Extend tunneling protocol deployments by correcting underlying networking problems.
  • Move more traffic over distance by eliminating the congestion and packet loss that typifiies long-distance, tunneled connections.

Resources

  • This video demonstrates the basic process of creating a Silver Peak tunnel in order to optimize traffic. The video covers tunnel configuration, creating a route policy that specifies what is being optimized, and checking your work via the Current Flows.
  • Growing concern over the interception of Internet traffic by governmental agencies is driving enterprises to revisit how they secure storage replication and other essential applications between locations. Conventional site-to-site virtual private networks (VPNs) protect data in-flight, but require extensive networking expertise to configure and do not address the performance challenges of delivering applications over distance. Silver Peak's Accelerated IPSec combines the best of site-to-site IPSec VPN security and wide area network (WAN) acceleration.
  • Data Center Interconnect (DCI)  initiatives use technologies such as Cisco's Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) to extend data centers across locations. But in order for DCI to be effective, IT must address the bandwidth limitations, high rates of packet loss, and increased the delay of the WAN separating those locations. Data acceleration and WAN optimization, in particular, compensates for those challenges, enabling architects of software-defined data centers to meet DCI initiative.
  • Autodesk, Inc. is a world leader in 2D and 3D design and engineering software for the manufacturing, building and construction, and media and entertainment markets. Since its introduction of AutoCAD® software in 1982, Autodesk has developed the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art software applications to help customers experience their ideas digitally before they are built. Fortune 1000 companies rely on Autodesk for the tools to design, visualize and simulate their ideas to save time and money, enhance quality and foster innovation for competitive advantage.
  • Panasonic turns to Silver Peak for Real-Time Global Design Collaboration