Dophiのブログ

Riverbed released a new RiOS version 5.0 in the beginning of this year, only one year after the pervious version 4.1 released. As Riverbed claims, this is a faster, scalable, and the most complete Wide-area data services (WDS) solution and a milestone of it's WDS technology which improve the performance of WAN acceleration on different protocols or applications especially the Exchange 2007. In addition, RiOS 5.0 provides a new concept called RiOS Services Platform (RSP) which allow administrator add more functions such as UTM, streaming, Virtual Machines as long as licenses are installed in a Riverbed platform (oops, just like a all-in-one box).

Listed below are new features I would like to pick up:

1. HTTP Turbo v2: RiOS improves the latency optimization of HTTP base application such as ERP and CRM. In some projects, ERP system was the most difficult application to be accelerated due to the objects on a ERP system are complex and duplication is too low to increase data hit rate on RiOS. RiOS makes this better by Page Parse and Pre-fetch. Those techniques look at dynamic web page requests. When the page comes across, the client-side Steelhead will parse the web page and immediately pre-fetch embedded objects to minimize round trips over the WAN and delays from sequential operations.
2. WAN Visibility: RiOS provides 3 different modes of operation in version 5.0; Currect Addressing, Port Visibility, and Full Visibility. This is the most important feature for me. In many network structures, routers, QoS, or other traffic control has been implemented before a Steelhead. Correct Addressing was the only one way to optimize WAN traffic period to 5.0 and the IP address and ports of every traffic passing through a Steelhead were changed to the IP address of that Steelhead and port 7800. This made routers or other devices can't identify what the traffic really is. With this new feature, those devices are no longer "blind".
3. SSL v2: With this feature, It is no
   longer necessary to copy and paste Steelhead appliance keys since no SSL-specific rules are required on the remote Steelhead appliance, and there is wildcard certificate support on the server-side Steelhead appliance.
4. Oracle JInitiator: RiOS supports Oracle Forms optimization in native (socket) mode, HTTP mode, and HTTPS mode. In addition to the JInitiator VM, RiOS also supports the Sun JVM in native mode.

Compare with other competitors, Riverbed has some advantages and keep leading in WDS filed. But, can these advantages be kept for a long time? I am not sure. Recently, Juniper merged Packeteer and might move Packeteer's QoS technology into WX or WXC Application Acceleration Platforms. Qos function of Steelhead is weak in WDS market, so I hope this part can be improved more in near future.