Finding the Proxy in WAN Optimization

You may be wondering what WAN Optimization has to do with a proxy, but in fact if you look at the implementation of WAN Optimization you'll find that most if not all WAN Optimization solutions behave very similarly to a proxy in many of the protocols they intercept and optimize.

If you're not familiar with WAN Optimization (and there's good reason not to be, as a recent Network World article discovered around a one-third of IT workers are not familiar with WAN Optimization), then it's probably a good time to get acquainted. As the economy worsens, your IT organization is probably looking for ways to save money and WAN Optimization may be the solution if you have high bandwidth costs between remote offices.

WAN Optimization, like a proxy, intercepts various protocols. In a proxy this protocol is of course typically HTTP. In WAN Optimization we generally talk about CIFS (file sharing), e-mail, HTTP, and other well known protocols. For obscure and proprietary protocols most WAN Optimization devices allow you to bypass these protocols and allow them to pass through the device unchanged. In a proxy many of the HTTP objects are cached to reduce the bandwidth used and improve the performance of the web service. In a WAN Optimization device, caching as well as protocol optimization, compression and other techniques are used to reduce the bandwidth going across the WAN link. Because of the necessity to manipulate bytes, the WAN Optimization device acts like a proxy terminating the protocol at the device.

Where WAN Optimization differs from a proxy is that a WAN Optimization device typically sits at both ends of the WAN link, whereas a proxy is usually a single point device. But both devices share similar features and functionality and in fact can even be the same device, at least in the case of the Blue Coat Systems ProxySG which is both a proxy and a WAN Optimization device.

Perhaps the WAN Optimization (proxy) should be the next proxy in your network.