Cisco WAAS

Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is technology that optimizes the performance of TCP-based applications operating in a Wide Area Network (WAN) environment while preserving and strengthening branch security. WAAS combines WAN optimization, optimization of the Transport Control Protocol (TCP), Data Redundancy Elimination (DRE, also known as deduplication) and application protocol acceleration in a single a network-attached appliance or router-integrated module form factor.

The distributed ADS market was about 4 years old in 2004 when Cisco acquired Actona Technologies. The acquisition gave Cisco basic wide-area file services (WAFS) techniques. Since then Cisco has been busy integrating the technology and making several extensions. Cisco calls the resulting software Wide Area Application Services (WAAS). WAAS delivers a combination of TCP optimization, proxy services, and byte-level and file caching. It runs on Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) hardware platforms, including standalone appliances and network modules (NME) for the Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISRs).

Notably, Cisco was the first to provide a WAN optimization system that was transparent to the network. This was accomplished by preserving IP packet header details, including IP addresses, and TCP port numbers, which have been deemed important for intermediary devices and services to function properly. Examples of devices that could be impacted by packet header obfuscation include firewalls, routers, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and general quality of service (QoS) techniques. Other providers of this technology have consequently provided solutions to solving this problem as well.

WAN optimization appliances have traditionally limited IT when it comes to maintaining functions such as security, Quality of Service, visibility, and monitoring end-to-end transactions because they tend to cause problems for most network monitoring devices and tools. By design, WAN Optimization “confuses” performance monitoring systems by changing packet header data.^{[1] [2]}

Latest Release
Cisco's latest WAAS software release is version 4.4.1.

Alternatives

Open Source

• Traffic Squeezer
• WANProxy

Commercial

• Blue Coat ProxySG
• Citrix Branch Repeater
• Exinda
• Juniper WXC
• Riverbed Steelhead
• Silver Peak NX, VX & VRX

Notes

1. ^ The impact of WAN Optimization on TCP Applications
2. ^ Tracking the optimized WAN

References

• Cisco WAAS product page
• Making your apps faster, Cisco-style
• WAAS up with Cisco's WAN Optimization Initiative?
• NetQoS partners with Cisco WAAS to develop application response time reporting for WAN optimization