A vast area network (WAN) allows businesses to transfer information between sites. Data must be sent quickly, securely, and without errors between the main office and remote staff or with suppliers.
WAN optimization helps achieve this. It uses several techniques to improve data transfer efficiency, such as TCP acceleration, window scaling, and data compression.
Table of Contents
LAN
Network optimization tools can be applied to improve data transfer efficiency in the LAN. This helps to alleviate bandwidth limitations, reduce latency and packet loss, and optimize limited resources.
This is important to ensure that critical business applications remain responsive and available.
Wide area network optimization can be implemented in the LAN using hardware WAN accelerators, virtual application delivery controllers, and SD-WAN solutions.
These are typically deployed as physical or virtual appliances and placed at either end of the WAN connection.
These devices help to speed up network traffic by adding predefined labels to each packet of data. This allows packets to be routed faster without performing the time-consuming task of looking up a complete IP address for each parcel.
Other WAN optimization tools that can be implemented in the LAN include data compression, data deduplication, and TCP acceleration.
Protocol acceleration bundles chatty protocols into a single protocol to minimize WAN overhead. This reduces network handshakes and packet headers and saves on storage space by reducing the data sent across the WAN.
Effective LAN monitoring is also essential to identify potential issues and respond quickly.
LAN traffic patterns can fluctuate over time and may reveal inefficiencies in the network structure, performance bottlenecks, or security threats. Detecting problems early can prevent them from impacting productivity and customer experience.
WAN
As enterprises expand globally, WAN optimization can help them deliver business-critical applications from their data centers to remote employees and customers.
WAN optimization solutions reduce network latency and optimize bandwidth use to improve performance.
They also reduce telecommunication costs by reducing the number of data packets that must be retransmitted due to lost packages.
WAN optimization technologies include WAN accelerator appliances and WAN traffic-shaping software.
WAN accelerators are physical or virtual appliances that accelerate traffic by caching and resending data as needed.
Traffic shaping prioritizes application-specific traffic and allocates bandwidth accordingly. WAN optimization software can eliminate the need for duplicate data transmissions by using forward error correction to replace lost packets with valid information.
Other WAN optimization tools include window scaling and data deduplication.
The global WAN optimization market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.5% from 2020 to 2027, driven by the growing adoption of cloud-based WAN optimization solutions.
Large enterprises with multiple geographic locations rely on WAN optimization to monitor and manage their complex IT infrastructure and centralized applications.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also prompted many organizations to allow employees to work from home, driving demand for WAN optimization solutions supporting remote employee productivity.
Hybrid networks are another growth opportunity for the WAN optimization market.
They are easy to deploy through the cloud, flexible enough to meet changing enterprise needs and provide quick global availability.
Moreover, hybrid networks maintain stable latency and low packet loss by having dedicated points of presence.
Cloud
In the cloud, WAN optimization can improve performance for applications that require low latency and real-time data transmission.
These applications typically use high bandwidth to transfer data, so WAN optimization appliances help increase efficiency by compressing or deduplicating data before it is transmitted across the WAN.
They can also help reduce network congestion by allowing prioritized traffic to pass through the wire first.
These techniques are beneficial in the case of geographically distributed enterprises where internet connections may suffer from increased latency or packet loss.
Some WAN optimization products incorporate web caching tools to reduce the number of round-trips required to deliver a Web page.
This can improve performance for some cloud-based apps that would otherwise experience slow latency over global connections.
However, these capabilities don’t extend to encrypted traffic and don’t help with the performance of real-time applications.
The popularity of Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) has raised the question of whether WAN optimization is still necessary.
SD-WAN provides a way to combine MPLS, leased lines, and broadband internet into a single fabric that offers both redundancy and improved application performance.
The technology can help businesses avoid expensive MPLS connections and manage SaaS applications from branch offices over lower-cost internet connections.
However, it doesn’t address the problems of latency and bandwidth constraints associated with extending the WAN to remote locations.
Security
In security, WAN optimization can create separate networks for critical systems and less sensitive data and applications.
By doing so, a successful security incursion can only affect one domain, making it harder to spread beyond that domain.
This makes enterprises more secure against attack by reducing their attack surface. The WAN network is a large-scale telecommunication network that connects devices from different locations.
It can be accessed by clicking it using various links, including virtual private networks (VPNs), leased lines, wireless networks, and cellular networks.
The Internet is an example of a vast area network and the world’s largest.
Enterprises with geographically distributed sites may face issues with application performance due to latency and bandwidth constraints.
WAN optimization solutions use several techniques to resolve these issues to increase data transfer efficiency and improve application performance.
These include local caching, protocol optimization, and traffic shaping. They also reduce latency and packet loss by maximizing limited bandwidth.
Other techniques include window scaling, which increases the transmission window size so more data can be sent before it needs to be acknowledged.
Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) offers simplified connectivity and optimization, making it easier for network administrators to manage.
The solution uses cloud-based services to deliver the benefits of a WAN to branch offices and remote locations. This includes increasing productivity, lowering costs, and speeding up digital transformation.