InfoWorld has not published a comparative review of WAN optimization solutions, but it is not because we didn't try. Back in early 2005, just before Juniper's agreement to acquire Peribit kicked off a buying spree in the space, we made plans to round up a bunch of WAN products, expose them to a variety of traffic types and link characteristics, and see how things shaked out. We extended invitations to many vendors, and we discussed test methodology with a few, but in the end only one or maybe two were willing to be measured against competitors. Nearly all were eager to support a stand-alone review. But a comparison? The answer was either "Nope" or "We'll get back to you."
Some of the vendors offered what you might call artful excuses. Here's a list of the jucier ones we heard:
Because most WAN links have no appreciable packet loss, our solution doesn't handle that and we'd prefer you not test us that way
We don't want to be compared to vendor XYZ's CIFS optimization, although we are the best at CIFS optimization
Our focus is on optimizing long, fat pipes, not short skinny pipes, or short fat pipes, or long skinny pipes
We don't want to confuse our customer base by being compared to vendor XYZ
We do WAN optimization, not WAN acceleration (or vice-versa)
Posted by Doug Dineley on October 20, 2006 01:13 PM
