What is WAN Optimization?

http://www.4bridgeworks.com/wan-optimization/
What is WAN Optimization?
The one thing about WAN optimization to keep in the rear of your minds is that it can't replicate the speed of light - it is what it is - wide area network optimization can easily make a 2mb connection seem like a 10mb connection.

If you're transferring information in between short ranges, WAN optimization isn’t going to help. You need latency between the two places. Once you plug in the technology, everyone is going to notice you did something positive if they experience latency problems.

Any wide area network can be optimized. Furthermore, the further away or the worse the performance is at that isolated site, the greater effect WAN optimization can have on its effectiveness.

Essentially WAN optimization delivers local area network like performance over a WAN. So if you have remote individuals at another site or on-the-move, WAN optimization will help deliver the same quickness as users in your data centre would feel.

In a WAN there is a limit to bandwidth, conversation between sites and latency. So what many WAN optimisation systems do is break up and label documents and data and deliver them up to users.

After the user has used the documents and information - and created any modifications, the optimization software and hardware will only take notice of the adjustments to the data and transfer them back to the data centre...not the information the branch office or remote location already knows the data centre has!

Possibly the biggest advantage of WAN optimization is the advantage of less “round trips” in data transfers via satellite. A WAN optimized network can cut data transfer by over 90% - meaning much less reliance on narrow bandwidth and a lot faster access to remote data.