Network Acceleration Simplify WAN Optimization with Standard Servers Replace Specialized Hardware with Intel ® QuickAssist Technology By Peter Marek, Senior Director x86 Solutions, Advantech Networks & Communications Group T he growth in wide area network (WAN) traffic is creating major headaches for corporate IT departments. In order to main- tain acceptable performance, IT departments have turned to solu- tions like WAN optimization controllers (WOCs) and application delivery controllers (ADCs). These solutions can improve network efficiency, but until recently they required expensive, spe- cialized hardware that was difficult to design, deploy, and maintain. This article shows how an approach based on the recently updated Intel ® Platform for Large-Scale Communications Infrastructure Systems offers a more cost-effective and scalable solution. We demonstrate how this platform is optimized for the compression and cryptographic workloads at the heart of WAN optimization. We then explain how net- work equipment providers (NEPs) can rapidly create a scalable line of optimization solutions using off-the-shelf hardware from Advantech. Specifically, we will highlight the MIC-5333 AdvancedTCA (ATCA) blade and the FWA-2320 1U network appliance, and show how these software-compatible platforms enable scaling from entry-level perfor- mance all the way up to a 20-core blade. The WAN Optimization Challenge As network traffic continues to increase unabated, IT organizations are facing the growing challenge of maintaining acceptable application performance across the corporate WAN. They are also struggling to contain the costs of higher volumes of Internet data travelling over their leased lines. The situation is exacerbated by the rising numbers of roaming users and teleworkers dispersed country-wide or even glob- ally, as many companies’ employees now connect to their applications over a high-latency WAN rather than directly over the corporate LAN. In addition, an increasing dependence on applications migrated to the cloud and consolidated in centralized data centers is further straining leased network connections. When inherent WAN quality and latency issues are considered, application performance on the WAN can easily drop to an extent where it seriously compromises user productivity. As WAN latencies are inescapable and extra bandwidth is often consumed as fast as it can be provisioned, WAN optimization has become essential in improving the efficiency of corporate networks. WAN optimization maximizes data flow through techniques such as data compression, data deduplication, and data caching. By reducing bandwidth usage between user equipment and the data center, WAN optimization can ensure both application performance and accept- able file transfer times of geo-dispersed data sets, thereby improving efficiency and costs. When implementing optimization, security also needs to be consid- ered. As more and more external connections are made and broader sets of data exchanged between different sources, security threats increase. WAN optimization solutions therefore need to monitor and secure network resources and application access. In short, WAN optimization solutions like WOCs and ADCs should pro- vide a combination of application acceleration, availability, security, and visibility. To do so, these solutions must support compression for data reduction, fast authentication, and accelerated cryptography for both data at rest and data transmitted over the network. The challenge for NEPs and IT departments alike is that these tasks have extraordinary computational demands. Until recently, most equipment solved this problem by offloading cryptographic and compression computations onto specialized hardware accelerators. 26 | 2014 | 10 th Edition | Embedded Innovator | intel.com/embedded-innovator