Expand Plugs In with New IP Acceleration Options

by Alex Woodie

OS/400 shops looking to Expand Networks to alleviate bandwidth problems with their data replication environments have new options available from the Roseland, New Jersey, company. Yesterday, Expand announced a new modular architecture that includes specific plug-ins designed to speed certain types of traffic. The company is also packaging its IP accelerations capabilities as a software product for the first time and has launched new appliances.

Several OS/400 shops have reported exceptional compression rates--up to 500 percent and higher--on the 5250 datastreams of their high availability environments using Expand Networks' line of IP Accelerators. The news led to the formation of an exclusive OEM agreement between Expand and Lakeview Technology (see "Lakeview Launches MIMIX network1 IP Accelerators") this February.

Expand officials say compression rates for long-distance OS/400 data replication environments and other high-latency networks will go even higher because of the new modular architecture and a new TCP acceleration plug-in that it announced yesterday. The new TCP acceleration plug-in is based on Space Communications Protocol Standards (SPCS), developed by NASA to help eliminate bandwidth loss due to packet loss in satellite-based communications (the Defense Department is one of Expand's biggest customers).

"In a disaster recovery scenario, it's a well-known fact that TCP performance is suboptimal and can be improved," said Ariel Shulman, Expand's vice president of business development. "Every time there's a packet lost over TCP, the speed is cut in half, then it gradually goes back up. That's why TCP has trouble making full use of the bandwidth available."

With the TCP plug-in, users will be able to make nearly full use of their network connection, after Expand's patented byte-level data caching algorithm has done its work, Shulman says. This means that, for a 1.5 Mbps T-1 link that Expand has widened into a 6-Mbps pipe, users see about 5.9 Mbps of usable bandwidth, he said. "This TCP acceleration plug-in will come in very useful," he said.

In addition to the TCP plug-in, Expand has developed plug-ins that accelerates HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, and FTP traffic. The HTTP and FTP plug-ins are similarly designed, and work by caching frequently requested items in the memory of the Accelerator device. The HTTPS plug-in works by decrypting the SSL traffic (using the same set of encryption keys), compressing the traffic, and then re-encrypting the traffic before sending. In terms of traffic management, Expand also introduced support for Layer 7 on the IP stack, which it says should help network managers pinpoint application performance pain spots more easily.

All of the plug-ins, including Layer 7 support, are pre-loaded inside the Accelerator's Version 5 operating system. These new features will also be made available in the Accelerator devices that Expand manufacturers for Lakeview Technology. Lakeview's MIMIX network1 IP Accelerators also contain special coding that makes them even faster in OS/400 data replication environments, and are a little bit more expensive than the plain vanilla Accelerators from Expand.

Expand is, for the first time, also selling network acceleration software. Some of Expand's large customers have standardized on servers from Dell or Hewlett-Packard, which makes it more difficult to install and support Expand's hard-coded appliances, Shulman said. Now customers can purchase Expand's acceleration capabilities as a Linux application and load them on Intel-based servers. Pricing for the software is based on throughput (starting with 128 Kbps) and is identical to pricing for the appliances. Shulman says that a CPU server should be enough to handle acceleration of a 45 Mbps connection, which is the speed of a T-3 line.

Expand also has launched four new Accelerator appliances, including two new branch devices, the Accelerator 4020, which scales up to 4 Mbps of serial traffic, supports 50 private virtual circuits (PVCs), and starts at $5,495, and the Accelerator 4820, which scales up to 6 Mbps of IP traffic, supports 50 remote sites, and starts at $4,495. The company also announced the new Accelerator 6840 data center appliances, which scale from 2 to 45 Mbps, support up to 350 remote sites, and start at $24,995. Finally, the new HTTPS Accelerator, designed for securing e-business Web sites, supports speeds of up to 45 Mbps and starts at $28,995. For more information, go to www.expand.com.