It is time for an old fashion throw down between Cisco, Riverbed, Juniper and Blue Coat
The challenge: Bring your "A" game to Interop and compete against other vendors in the WAN Acceleration Arena, the Applications Acceleration Arena, the Disaster Recovery Arena and the Mobile Accelerations Arena.
The Place: The Big Show and that would be Interop in Las Vegas for all to see.
We will select the equipment used from each vendor, this will be based on the amount of users and expected TCP connections that we would have in our test network. It will be between a data center and local office in our test network. Also we will have a mobile client test working off this same set up going back to the data center.
We will ask each vendor to help with marketing, set up, equipment and monetary fees to establish a location at Interop. We will allow each vendor to set up their own equipment on this test network, run a few tests and then hand it over to us for our test runs. We will work with all vendors on a test scenario that will be used for all vendors in the tests. We want this to be one test and fair to all.
As a reader what tests would you like to see, what applications used and what overall results would you like to see?
Now the big question is which vendor will respond to us and accept the challenge? We will let you know who responds and who does not. I am looking for a response from each vendor to me by Friday. I am going to send this article to each vendor myself to make sure they get it.
Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the CEO/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a consulting and VAR partner specializing in WDS, VoIP, WLAN, Telepresence and Security. Pluto Networks is a leader in WDS-Application Acceleration, Full Disk Encryption, End Point Security and Telepresence. While specializing in the needs of large and enterprise companies, Pluto Networks has been concentrating on the SMB customers to provide them with the same great service as larger companies. Pluto Networks holds SMB specializations from our partners to service all their needs. Pluto Networks has become a leader in SMB VOIP using Cisco and Linksys to service customers.
Managing Cisco Secure Networks, Skype Me, Practical VOIP Security, Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1, Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls, Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless Security, How to Cheat at Microsoft Vista Administration, Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals, Asterisk Hacking, 2008 VoIP and Video Conferencing, Infosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.
Larry has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration or WDS. Larry is working with major vendors now on updating current certification tests to make them real world focused.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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WAN Acceleration
What about including packeteer's iShared unit in this trial? When I had a look at it, it out-performed Cisco's WAAS.
That is something to think about
So you are saying that Cisco is not even in the top 3 or 4 companies and your product should be included instead of Cisco? Maybe you can put a few comments in to tell us why this is true and what about marketshare?
end user comment (not a vendor)
Hi, I work for a wholesaler in the UK. I am not affiliated with or working for a vendor. I didnt like the Cisco WAAS in the test environment although I generally enjoy the many other Cisco products in use on our networks. Just saying the iShared was better in test for us. perhaps you would invite them along too? see how it performs. No pressure.
My God, we have a hero
Larry,
all I have to say is you are the man. I don't think anyone else would have called them out. It is a magnanimous idea that you have come up with, thats why you are one of the best on Networkworld. I know it will be hard to put this together in short time, but don't let them off the hook.
The one thing I read in an old article you wrote was that it would be really nice to have a real customer network to have a live challenge in. Maybe you can find a customer who would be willing to work with you.
keep up the good work,
Vendor Battlefield
That would be a great idea to showcase each vendors in a controlled test environment. Outside of the vendor boxes, all other equipment should be exact as per WAN simulator, traffic being sent across the link, etc. I feeling Riverbed will beat the rest, then Packeteer, Juniper, Bluecoat, and then Cisco. Cisco's attempt just doesn't work to performance as compared to the rest of the players.
Bogus
This is clearly a bogus test. Each WAN optimization vendor performs different on different apps and different networks. All this test is going to show is who is better at moving data from point A to point B which is not generally the requirements of real customers in real environments. Larry who has drank so much Riverbed kool-aid he is orange knows that Riverbed generally works best in a lab environment so he wants to make sure he can show that...
Talk about a bunch of liar's...
All the Riverbed reps I have been in contact with are probably the most conceded bunch of wankers I ever encountered.
Our company has been a RB customer for the past year. Lately we decided to move to a server based computing environment, and the guys from Riverbed kept telling us: "no one can help with that", "Riverbed can free the way for it by clearing the pipe from the other traffic", etc.
After looking into this more, we found out that Expand, claims that they can provide benefit to RDP and Citrix (those guys really need to get better marketing, as it was almost impossible to find them...). True to form our Riverbed rep, said that Expand is just claiming it and they can't do a thing.
After convincing my CIO we decided to give Expand a chance, and they were able to reduce the traffic for RDP by more than 4x! it also turned out that they did fairly well on all the other apps we use...
My CIO got so pissed that we are pulling out our Riverbed deployment...
True - they are annoying
I can at least concur that the Riverbed reps I dealt with are almost without exception conceded bastards - I am so happy their stock is going down...
Interesting information about RDP, we have been looking for someone that can do that ourselves, our Cisco guy kept saying that no one can help, I will need to check it out - Thanks!
Believing Dodgy Marketing (was: Talk about a bunch of liar's...)
The guys from Riverbed were only telling you the truth - I don't know why you think they're being somehow lying (or 'conceded' as you put it:)
Despite the marketing fluff from some vendors who claim to "optimize ICA" it CANNOT be optimized any further.
If you don't believe it, here it is from the horse's mouth (Citrix Consulting):
"Truths and Myths of Presentation Server and WAN Optimization"
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX113505
I've been working with Citrix ICA for over 10 years, and have been through many bake-offs with vendors who claim to optimize ICA. They may look good in the lab, but try it out in the real world and it won't make one iota of difference!
Expand USED to have some value many years ago before ICA was tuned and enhanced by Citrix themselves.
So Riverbed are just telling you what Citrix confirms..
maybe you should read the article before posting?
I would not say Larry has drank any Kool Aid from any vendor, seems he is trying to figure out who is best. At the bottom of his article he put this:
"As a reader what tests would you like to see, what applications used and what overall results would you like to see"?
This would lead me to believe that the network will represent a true customer environment with real world applications for windows, storage, ERP, SAP, web and others. I cannot see how that is bias to any one vendor.
It would be nice if there was one customer who had lets say 20 sites and wanted to be the test company. I know my CIO would go for it, a free test on your network with all of these vendors. Nothing like real world test in your own network to see what really works.
I say more power to him, he speaks his mind and has come up with a great idea. Too bad we have posters that are worried about their vendor of choice and don't see this as a real opportunity.
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