Expand Widens Coverage with New Network Control Software

by Alex Woodie

Expand Networks, developer of WAN acceleration devices, expanded the scope of its product offerings last week, when it announced a new network monitoring and control solution. Whereas Expand's family of Network ACCELERATORS use a combination of data caching and compression technology to boost a given pipe's bandwidth by up to 400 percent, the new ExpandView offering concentrates on understanding application traffic and ensuring a certain level of service.

ExpandView is a Windows-based application that works in conjunction with Expand's Network ACCELERATORS to analyze and control network traffic. The software automatically discovers and classifies more than 100 applications, including SAP, Microsoft Exchange, Citrix, and Kazaa network traffic, and can then set bandwidth allocation policies to ensure that people have access to the highest priority applications.

Pedro Colçao, Expand's vice president of marketing, says the company has realized the need for a solution like ExpandView over the last 18 to 24 months. The need is most apparent among Expand's larger customers that have deployed Network ACCELERATOR devices at every remote office, in some cases amounting to thousands of the devices in a single organization.

While the Network ACCELERATORS do collect information about the network traffic that runs through them, the devices do not provide a way to aggregate and use that information in a centralized manner. "Manually collating all that information can become a daunting task," Colçao says. "ExpandView consolidates that information for you into easy to understand reports."

In addition to showing administrators how much bandwidth their various applications are using, ExpandView lets users create quality of service templates that enforce their new polices. These policies could be used to automatically restrict bandwidth available to file-sharing applications, like Kazaa.

ExpandView also can be used to treat application performance problems when a lack of bandwidth is the cause of the problem. Bandwidth constraints are a major factor in many different types of network-dependent applications, including Lotus Notes and data replication associated with OS/400 high-availability environments. And when you consider that market researcher Gartner says wide area networks represent the single largest recurring cost for IS organizations, besides personnel, it's not difficult to see why a lack of bandwidth is a major contributor to degradation in application performance.

ExpandView is still in beta testing and should start shipping in January 2004. The software will require a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or later. Pricing will begin at $5,000 per server. Each instance of ExpandView should support up to 500 Network ACCELERATOR devices. ExpandView also requires Network ACCELERATORS to function; it doesn't work with standard routers and switches. For more information, go to www.expand.com.

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