1. The Silver Peak NX series has proven performance on all WAN links from small branch offices to large data centers. Big pipes,defined as a WAN link with > 30 Mbps WAN through-put, have very different performance, management, and scalability requirements than smaller WAN connections. They involve complex QoS, security and routing policies, for example, and support different types of applications. Silver Peak not only has a family of appliances which scales from 1 single Mbps to hundreds of Mbps (Gbps with clustering), but has an established a reputation for delivering the best performance on the larger connections. In competitive testing, customers such as Finisar, CapGemini, and AT&T have all chosen Silver Peak for this very reason.

2. Silver Peak can efficiently manage WAN acceleration and optimization across many locations. When many offices aggregate to a single office, there are head-end scalability issues that can impact the performance of a WAN acceleration solution. Or, when many remote offices are communicating to one another in a peer-to-peer fashion, it can be difficult to configure and manage optimization policies in a cost effective way. Silver Peak addresses both of these issues with its NX family of appliances and GMS management platform. Installations at the North Vancouver School District, Autodesk, and Texas Instruments are good examples of how dozens of offices can be “turned up” without impacting performance and manageability.
3. Silver Peak supports a diverse mix of applications. According to Gartner, the average enterprise has close to 100 different types of applications deployed. Unfortunately, every application behaves differently across the WAN. Some use TCP, which adds latency. Others are real-time, which makes them more susceptible to packet loss. Still others use proprietary or encapsulated transport protocols. It is one thing to be able to optimize file and email traffic, but what about real-time data replication or real-time SQL or Citrix? Silver Peak works on ALL enterprise traffic – regardless of transport protocol or latency sensitivity. As a result, Silver Peak appliances deliver the best ROI when choosing a WAN acceleration solution.
4. Silver Peak is the only vendor to address network integrity issues in real-time, which can otherwise hamper WAN performance. For example, out-of-order and lost packets are a silent killer when doing asynchronous replication as they cut through-put down to < 1 Mbps (regardless of the size of a WAN links). As these packet delivery issues are quite common in IP VPN, MPLS, and other “shared” networks, Silver Peak’s Network Integrity features play a vital role in many enterprise environments.
5. In the Silver Peak environment, data is always secured – at rest and across the WAN. One should pay careful attention to security in a WAN acceleration environment. If there is a requirement to encrypt traffic, make sure that this capability is not a roadblock to scalability. Disk encryption and IPsec, for example, are both extremely valuable from a data protection and compliance standpoint. But, they are also very CPU intensive. This is achieved using hardware-based acceleration within the NX appliances, and IPsec between appliances. Silver Peak performs these functions in dedicated hardware to ensure that they do not impact performance and scalability.

Silver Peak Accelerators vs. Riverbed Steelhead Appliances

Comparing Silver Peak to Riverbed? Contact CTC Technologies to receive a whitepaper comparing Silver Peak NX Series® to Riverbed Steelhead® appliances.

Silver Peak vs. Cisco WAAS.

Download a recent Gartner report-Cisco WAAS Update: Client Feedback Suggests to Proceed With Caution