Deployment Topologies

Getting the most from a PacketShaper depends on choosing the right deployment strategy for your topology and needs. That’s what these deployment topologies are all about: where, when, and what to deploy.

The following deployment topologies are relevant after you decide you want PacketShapers but before you start unplugging and plugging cables to install them. Although these sections of PacketGuide address you, the customer, it assumes that a Packeteer sales engineer or partner is working with you in deciding on an appropriate deployment strategy.

You can deploy PacketShaper comprehensively throughout many or all offices, or you can start more slowly and follow a phased deployment strategy starting with a core site first. Benefits vary with the product and locations you choose. When you consider where you will place your PacketShaper units, also consider which features are required at each location.

• Packeteer's monitoring module provides deep insight into application traffic, making it easy to identify and measure all traffic types—mission-critical, recreational and miscellaneous. This module gives visibility into network and application behavior with analysis features including classification, utilization analysis, service-level management, efficiency analysis, thresholding and events, packet capture, diagnostic graphs, and reports.
  
  
• The shaping module enables you to shape traffic, ensure Quality of Service (QoS) and provide latency-sensitive, business-critical applications with the bandwidth they need to perform at their peak using flexible policy-based control. You can use this module to fix critical application performance issues with this module by appropriately allocating bandwidth, and minimize network congestion, queuing latency and inefficiencies that hurt application response times between remote locations.
  
  
• The compression module shrinks the size of transferred traffic, effectively increasing the amount of bandwidth available on a link. You can enable/disable compression globally or for a specific tunnel. By integrating these technologies with the monitoring and shaping modules, PacketWise ensures that the increased virtual WAN pipe is not consumed by aggressive, non-mission critical applications that burst to consume any bandwidth given to them.
  
  
• Packeteer's acceleration module significantly improves the performance of TCP/IP over satellite links or long-delay terrestrial networks. This module accelerates both transactions and file transfers to enhance network performance. Xpress acceleration allows you to maximize bandwidth utilization, speed up application response times, accelerate the transfer of large files, and minimize the impact of other problems that are common with TCP-based applications on high-latency links.

Select a link below to view deployment and configuration information for the following topics:

Description	Topology	PacketWise version
Core Site WAN Link Topology: A core-site WAN-link topology has a PacketShaper or iShaper only at core sites.		5.x and later
Core Site Internet Link Topology: A core-site Internet-link topology has a PacketShaper or iShaper at the core site’s link to VPN-connected edge offices, dial-up VPN users, partner extranets, and/or simply the web.		5.x and later
Distributed Edge Topologies: A distributed topology has a  PacketShaper or iShaper at each core and remote site. It is the most powerful and flexible topology. In addition, it is the topology of choice for Packeteer’s Xpress compression and acceleration features.		5.x and later
Topologies with Multiple Lans: This topology includes any environment with multiple LANs connected to one or more routers attached to WAN or Internet links.		5.x and later
Virtual Private Network (VPN) Topology: A VPN can serve as an economical WAN alternative, but may suffer unpredictable performance for mission-critical applications. To add to this problem, most monitoring tools aren’t able to portray VPNs’ encrypted traffic with any detail. An iShaper or PacketShaper can help both issues.		5.x and later
Topologies with Firewalls: This topology includes any environment with both a firewall and a PacketShaper or iShaper.		5.x and later
Redundant Topologies (Direct Standby): Packeteer’s direct standby function allows a PacketShaper to integrate smoothly into a variety of redundant network topologies — those with redundant routers, redundant switches, two data paths, two LANs, and/or redundant firewalls		7.5.x or 8.1.x and later
Non-Inline Deployments (Watch Mode): Packeteer's watch mode is used to monitor traffic non-inline, where the PacketShaper or iShaper is not cabled into the core data path. This type of deployment is best suited for enterprises that have strict change control procedures or security restrictions on the introduction of inline elements into the network.		6.1.x and later
SkyX and PacketShaper or iShaper Appliances: Xpress has the ability to accelerate traffic between hosts on one side of a PacketShaper or iShaper appliance and hosts on the other side of a SkyX device. This type of tunnel, called a SkyX tunnel, requires that you manually create a static tunnel that is SkyX compatible.		8.x and later
Topologies with iShared and PacketShaper Appliances: The WCCP-based traffic redirection feature allows customers to use a PacketShaper and iShared appliance (or any other cache device that supports WCCPv1 or V2) at the same site and get full benefits of both appliances.		8.2.x and later
iShaper Topologies with Multiple LANS: iShaper supports topologies with multiple LANs. It is important that iShaper see all network traffic at the site, as traffic using any portion of access-link bandwidth should be managed together with a cohesive strategy.		5.3.x and later