[AusNOG] Riverbed (or other) Edge devices for data compression - Seeking feedback or Suggestions

[Edwin Groothuis]

On 30/01/13 15:54 , Ben Dale wrote:
>
> On 30/01/2013, at 2:22 PM, Ed Hallett <ed at teltech.net.au 
> <mailto:ed at teltech.net.au>> wrote:
>
>> At a previous contract (Australia / Dubai wide commercial 
>> architectural design company) we had Riverbed's handling the load 
>> between heavily utilised local file servers (those CAD drawings are 
>> big!!) -- we had significant problems with users reporting slow 
>> access speeds to ArchiCAD / AutoCAD docs and similar. It still wasn't 
>> resolved after 6 months of talking to Riverbed, and is ongoing I believe.
>
> It's been quite a few years since I've played in this space, but I do 
> recall that CAD files were (once) the bane of WAN Acceleration 
> products everywhere.
>
> Someone explained it to me that when making even small changes to CAD 
> files, the structure/contents/order of the file is changed so 
> drastically that traditional caching/diff methods become ineffective. 
>  I find this highly ironic since the size of these files and the 
> inevitable number of revisions that must be sent around the place must 
> be staggering...

The same is true for the compressed Office documents (docx, xlsx, odf): 
Instead of a binary format which can be nicely structured and thus a 
little change does not cause a large change, it is compressed and thus a 
little change at the beginning (metadata which keeps the time of the 
last change) totally screws up the contents of the rest of the file.

So before the new format you had great data reduction while saving and 
loading, after the new format you had only great data reduction when you 
are loading it again.

> As for the OP - Riverbed licensing is/was based on number of active 
> sessions through the appliances - be VERY optimistic around these 
> numbers when sizing your appliance as exceeding them will leave you 
> with unaccelerated traffic flows and very bizarre performance issues.

Yups. These devices will show you what is going on in your network and 
that if often way much different than what you think there is :-)


Edwin
(Please note: Riverbed TAC person, but not wearing that hat now)

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