WAN Acceleration

Question

Hello all. I originally posted this message in the novell.support.native-
file-access forum and it was suggested that I try this forum instead. So
here goes.
We are in the process of evaluating a WAN accelerator solution
from a company named Riverbed. They have an array of WAN accelerator
appliances called Steelhead's. These appliances sit at each WAN location
and actually CACHE the WAN data that is accessed across the wire, thus
giving your WAN a LAN like performance. We have 3 sites connected via T1
lines and are a Civil Engineering firm that at times needs to have multiple
people in multiple offices work on the same projects. We can do this now
with our setup but the file access performance at the remote sites back to
our main office is fairly sluggish. The Steelhead appliances are supposed
to improve this performance dramatically. Spoke to one of their
representitives and they mentioned that another client of theirs also used
NetWare and they simply had to enable CIFS on their servers since NCP
traffic is not accelerated by their devices. I know there is more to the
configuration than that. Has anyone out there had experience configuring
NetWare boxes with these Riverbed Steelhead appliances? Any information
would be appreciated. We are going to be getting some of their reps in
here soon, hopefully they can shed some light on this as far as what kind
of configuration they require from their end. We currently have a total
of 7 NetWare 6.5 SP2 servers spread throughout our 3 locations. We have
not had a need for any other native file access (CIFS, AFP, NFS) since we
are a complete Novell shop. As you may have guessed, NFAP is fairly new
to me, always been a die hard Novell guy. Again, thanks to all for any
information you could provide.
John

Answer 1

Hi
found some interesting links about your subject. I remember that in my
company they werde quite impressed about peribit. So go ahead and compare...
However you have also to consider that theses boxes are not always black
boxes they mostly need some maintenance....
www.allot.com
www.cisco.de
www.expand.com
www.nortelnetworks.com
www.packeteer.com
www.peribit.com
www.telonic.de
Regards
Marc
[email protected] wrote:
> Unfortunately Branch Office doesn't offer bi-directional synchronization
> which is what most people would look for when deploying somthing like this.
> On initial setup id does do bi-directional sync, but that's about it.
>
> The reason we are looking for a solution like this is because it is one of
> the very few solutions that offer this type of functionality. Unfortunately
> these vendors don't offer support for Novell.
>
>
>
>
>>We do have native file access (cifs) and consider going back. NCP has
>>more performance and is more secure. We had abends because of client
>>security upgrades and were even forced to upgrade from 6.0 to 6.5
>>rapidly. I always see a higher risk when implementing a service pack
>>etc. By the way: Why are you going to buy a solution at a vendor with
>>*NO* (not even little) Novell experience. Consider using Novell Branch
>>office if you are a real novell shop.
>>
>>Bill Sappington wrote:
>>
>>>Hey there,
>>>
>>>Enabling Windows native file access is just insane, avoid at all costs.
>>> One of the only major Novell threats came from CIFS, because they of
>>>course implemented MicroSofts protocol exactly, and therefor implemented
>>>their bugs and wholes as well. Now one might ask WHY they did this,
>>>well its because they had to be compatable with a completely exploitable
>>>file access protocol. They fixed the security whole, and I dont * think
>>>* it affected the native access protocol for windows, but in my opinion
>>>windows file access protocols are just not trustable, and well for that
>>>matter, neither is windows.
>>>
>>>Consider BroderManager. It has web caching and all those other goodies,
>>>including compliant fire walls, client VPN, server to server VPN and all
>>>that fun stuff and its priced very reasonably. It also lets you control
>>>who gets to surf, when they get to surf, where they get to surf, etc. etc.
>>>
>>>- Bill
>>>
>>>[email protected] wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hello all. I originally posted this message in the
>>>>novell.support.native-
>>>>file-access forum and it was suggested that I try this forum instead.
>>>>So here goes.
>>>>
>>>>We are in the process of evaluating a WAN accelerator solution from a
>>>>company named Riverbed. They have an array of WAN accelerator
>>>>appliances called Steelhead's. These appliances sit at each WAN
>>>>location and actually CACHE the WAN data that is accessed across the
>>>>wire, thus giving your WAN a LAN like performance. We have 3 sites
>>>>connected via T1 lines and are a Civil Engineering firm that at times
>>>>needs to have multiple
>>>>people in multiple offices work on the same projects. We can do this
>>>>now with our setup but the file access performance at the remote sites
>>>>back to our main office is fairly sluggish. The Steelhead appliances
>>>>are supposed to improve this performance dramatically. Spoke to one
>>>>of their representitives and they mentioned that another client of
>>>>theirs also used NetWare and they simply had to enable CIFS on their
>>>>servers since NCP traffic is not accelerated by their devices. I know
>>>>there is more to the configuration than that. Has anyone out there
>>>>had experience configuring NetWare boxes with these Riverbed Steelhead
>>>>appliances? Any information would be appreciated. We are going to be
>>>>getting some of their reps in here soon, hopefully they can shed some
>>>>light on this as far as what kind of configuration they require from
>>>>their end. We currently have a total of 7 NetWare 6.5 SP2 servers
>>>>spread throughout our 3 locations. We have not had a need for any
>>>>other native file access (CIFS, AFP, NFS) since we are a complete
>>>>Novell shop. As you may have guessed, NFAP is fairly new to me,
>>>>always been a die hard Novell guy. Again, thanks to all for any
>>>>information you could provide.
>>>>John
>>>>
>>>>
>
>