Lab Testing Summary Report

Transcription

1 Lab Testing Summary Report September 2007 Report Product Category: WAN Optimization Vendor Tested: Packeteer, Inc. Product Tested: ishaper 400 Key findings and conclusions: Deep packet inspection for high visibility into traffic flows Easy to apply QoS to guarantee critical traffic such as VoIP TCP, CIFS and HTTP acceleration, caching and compression reduce bandwidth consumption and improve branch office end user experience Integrated Microsoft service such as print, SMS, domain controller, and network (DNS & DHCP) Centralized management for multi-branch deployments Packeteer, Inc. engaged Miercom to evaluate the ishaper 400 branch office appliance. The ishaper 400 combines WAN optimization services; application visibility and QoS, CIFS and protocol acceleration, data compression and caching; in a single platform that streamlines infrastructure while improving network performance. Testing of the ishaper 400 showed that the 3U rack mounted appliance, which is rated to optimize 10 Mbps of traffic, can make a dramatic improvement in the end user experience even with fresh content. The combination of services gives organizations a rich collection of tools with which to optimize, compress, accelerate and cache data and protocols at the branch office. The ishaper was able to address a wide set of applications such as voice, files, transactions, HTTP and as well as control hard to identify recreational applications. Figure 1: User Experience Improvement Ten users copying a 2 MB Microsoft Office file from the core server over a T1 circuit. Improvement demonstrated even for the first data retrieval.

2 Test Bed Test Bed. The test environment consisted of a central headquarters and a branch office both with an ishaper 400 inline. A second branch was also connected to the central office but without an ishaper in place. WAN conditions and bandwidth throttling was performed with a Shunra Virtual Enterprise (Shunra VE) 5.2. Ixia IxChariot version 6.5 was used to generate most application traffic. YouTube feeds were pulled directly by the clients in the branch office sites from the Internet via the headquarters. Mail testing was performed with Microsoft Outlook loaded on the client computer and accessing the Microsoft Exchange server located in the Headquarters. Visibility and QoS: Ixia IxChariot was used to generate six pairs of VoIP calls with G.729 and PCMU (G.711) codecs. Additional traffic pairs were setup with HTTP, FTP, FlashVideo, Gnutella and BitTorrent. CIFS Acceleration: Ten users were simulated in each branch office copying a 2 MB, 80% compressible Microsoft Office file from the core file server. Three test runs; native (no ishaper), cold (ishaper first run), warm (ishaper second run); were conducted for each network condition with the cache being reset between each network condition. The network conditions used were T1 (1.544 Mbps) with 80 ms, 300 ms and 300 ms delay with 2% packet loss as well as 10Mbps with 80 ms and 300 ms of delay at no loss. For the 10 Mbps connection, from the branch office client a 2 MB Microsoft Word file was opened, modified and saved back to the file server at the Headquarter location. The duration of the open and save were timed. HTTP: Ten users were simulated in each branch office copying a 6.3 MB, 67% compressible Microsoft Office file from the core file server over port 80. Three test runs; native (no ishaper), cold (ishaper first run), warm (ishaper second run); were conducted for each network condition with the cache being reset between each network condition. The network conditions used were T1 (1.544 Mbps) and 10 Mbps both with 80 ms and 300 ms of delay. MAPI: Four 5 MB non-compressible messages were sent to the recipients. A client at each branch synchronized with Microsoft Outlook and the response time and bandwidth utilization were monitored. Three test runs; native (no ishaper), cold (ishaper first run), warm (ishaper second run); were conducted for each network condition with the cache being reset between each network condition. The network conditions used were 10 Mbps with 80 ms and 300 ms of delay. Configuration The ishaper 400 is an all-in-one appliance designed for the branch office. It is available with redundant power supplies and up to 600 GB of RAID 5 storage. The ishaper is designed to sit inline just behind the WAN router with a 10/100/1000 LAN and 10/100 WAN ports that fail to wire upon power loss, ensuring no disruption while inline. Initial setup can be done using the integrated LCD panel and console port. Additional configuration and management is performed over an HTTP interface. Test Results The ishaper 400 was put through a series of tests to demonstrate several of the key features of its network and WAN optimization capabilities. Visibility One of the foundations to the ishaper 400 s abilities is the deep visibility it can provide to application traffic on the network. The ishaper can automatically identify and classify over 600 applications for Copyright 2007 Miercom WAN Optimization Page 2

3 application performance monitoring, as well as definition of application level QoS and acceleration. Figure 3: Unacceptable VoIP call quality before QoS Figure 2: Visibility - Sample of application identification In testing, the ishaper automatically classified a mix of recreational (edonkey, YouTube, BitTorrent), business (FTP and HTTP) and critical (G.729 and G.711 VoIP) traffic. With the real time reporting, fluctuations in traffic volumes as well as high water marks were easy to determine. QoS Since the ishaper is able to precisely classify traffic streams, applying QoS to a specific traffic type is relatively straight forward. The Application QoS Manager is a web interface that allows administrators to quickly search for specific inbound or outbound application types and configure QoS. Once a traffic stream is selected, the QoS policy can be set as a minimum and/or maximum bandwidth guarantee. Packets can also be marked with DiffServ tags for interoperability with MPLS networks. Figure 4: Good VoIP call quality after ishaper QoS Limits were also placed on peer-to-peer and recreation traffic in real time. The ishaper immediately blocked unwanted traffic and reduced recreational HTTP traffic to a fraction of the available bandwidth based on the policy set. CIFS Acceleration Using a combination of application specific TCP acceleration, caching and RAM based compression; the ishaper is able to dramatically improve file access over the WAN. Configuration and setup are straightforward. The server or shares to be accelerated can be manually entered or the ishaper can be set to auto discover. Once configured, ishaper will index the file structure of the server or share. Local caching can also be enabled to further accelerate performance. In testing, the VoIP traffic streams were classified and given a guaranteed bandwidth as needed, per codec. The VoIP traffic was run along with the additional Ixia IxChariot traffic with and without QoS applied. With no other changes to the network, the ishaper s QoS was able to improve the overall voice quality from an average MOS 1 of 2.95 to 4.03 (R- Factor of 50 to 90). It also provided a more consistent traffic flow for the VoIP data as shown in the two IxChariot graphs. 1 MOS is measured on a scale of 1 to 5 Figure 5: ishaper improvements for CIFS Opens, saves and multiple fetches Copyright 2007 Miercom WAN Optimization Page 3

4 As shown in figure 1, the ishaper showed a dramatic impact for first time file transfers. When packet loss was introduced the impact was even greater, reducing the transfer time by over 95%. Even for larger WAN connections as shown in figure 6, the end users experience with an ishaper 400 in place is greatly improved. Remote file opens and saves are accelerated by 65% or more. HTTP with Wide Dictionary Caching (WDC) The ishaper s WDC abilities can also be applied on HTTP downloads. Testing was conducted similar to above with various WAN bandwidths and network conditions. Again there was an immediate impact with the ishaper in place. As shown in figure 6 there is a greater than 75% improvement in the end user experience over a T1 link. Figure 6: Single user download over T1 connection For larger network connections with more users the result is the same as shown in figure 7. Multiple users experience an improvement of 75-99% on the cold load and up to 99% on a warm load. Figure 7: 10 users over a 10Mbps connection Microsoft Exchange Application specific acceleration and optimization is also part of the feature set within the ishaper. One such application is Microsoft Exchange. Using a 10 Mbps connection, clients downloaded several large messages under various network conditions. Figure 8: Reduction in bandwidth consumption During the first file request, the ishaper will monitor and cache the data. While the bandwidth consumption remains unchanged because the files were not compressible, the response time compared to a network without an ishaper inline is accelerated as much as 60%. During subsequent downloads, the cache power of the ishaper can be seen with bandwidth reductions over 75% (Figure 8). IT Services Packeteer s ishaper also acts as a delivery point for key Microsoft services, including Print and File Services, DNS, DHCP, Domain Controller and System Management Server (SMS). These abilities to integrate with standard Microsoft management tools provide an option to consolidate equipment in remote locations. Centralized Management Packeteer offers various management modules for centralized QoS management, application performance reporting and device configuration. For larger enterprises, multiple ishaper 400s can be centrally managed with the centralized policy management application. From this centralized portal, QoS and bandwidth policies can be set and distributed to all registered ishapers. Using the central reporting tools, data can be collected and consolidated for easy analysis and reporting on the entire network. Conclusion The Packeteer ishaper 400 provides enterprise customers with a powerful collection of tools and services in a single platform. The ishaper 400 can intelligently optimize WAN utilization, protect business critical applications and reduce response time for end users all while reducing infrastructure complexity. Copyright 2007 Miercom WAN Optimization Page 4

5 Miercom Performance Verified Based on Miercom s examination and testing of the Packeteer ishaper 400 network accelerator and review of its configuration, deployment and operation as described herein, Miercom hereby issues the Performance Verified certification for the product in this report. Miercom certifies the following key observations made during this review: Deep packet inspection for high visibility into traffic flows Easy to apply QoS to guarantee critical traffic such as VoIP TCP, CIFS and HTTP acceleration, caching and compression reduce bandwidth consumption and improve branch office end user experience Integrated Microsoft service such as print, SMS, domain controller, and network (DNS & DHCP) Centralized management for multi-branch deployments Packeteer, Inc N. De Anza Blvd. Cupertino, CA USA ishaper 400 Tel: Fax: About Miercom s Product Testing Services With hundreds of its product-comparison analyses published over the years in such leading network trade periodicals as Business Communications Review and Network World, Miercom s reputation as the leading, independent product test center is unquestioned. Founded in 1988, the company has pioneered the comparative assessment of networking hardware and software, having developed methodologies for testing products from SAN switches to VoIP gateways and IP PBX s. Miercom s private test services include competitive product analyses, as well as individual product evaluations. Products submitted for review are typically evaluated under the NetWORKS As Advertised program, in which networking-related products must endure a comprehensive, independent assessment of the products usability and performance. Products that meet the appropriate criteria and performance levels receive the NetWORKS As Advertised award and Miercom Labs testimonial endorsement. 379 Princeton-Hightstown Rd., East Windsor, NJ fax Report Copyright 2007 Miercom WAN Optimization Page 5