Worry Free WAFS
Worry Free WAFS
February 16, 2006: US startup Certeon claims it has developed a way to accelerate WAN links without compromising data security.
It seems like everyone is bringing out their own WAN accelerator these days. However, while they all offer impressive increases in WAN performance, none can increase the speed of encrypted traffic without compromising security.
Certeon however, claims that its S-Series WAN accelerator can speed up encrypted SSL traffic without going through the traffic decryption, compression and re-encryption process performed by similar solutions.
The company says that “current acceleration approaches on the market operate below a security ceiling and are unable to accelerate encrypted traffic”. Its solution on the other hand, apparently works above the secure acceleration ceiling at the application layer. It interprets application semantics and works off application “blueprints” to shorten session protocols and transmit only the application data that has changed, while retaining encryption.
It is this blueprint system that sets the device apart from its peers. These are basically special pre-defined compression schemes which cut out a lot of the device’s work, leaving it to learn only local data. Blueprints are currently available for Oracle eBusiness Suite, Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Sharepoint.
Certeon is certainly not alone in the market, with companies such as Brocade, Riverbed and Cisco vying for a piece of the pie.
The Certeon S-Series comes in three models, the S-1000, S-2000 and S-3000, to support small branch offices, regional offices and large data centres. Pricing starts at US$6,000 for the S-1000.
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