From June 2007

By M.V. Greene

“The network is slow.”

As network data supervisor for Cellular South, Davey Ware would often hear this complaint from managers and associates at the wireless provider’s retail stores and remote locations. Invariably, technology users “want everything point and click,” he says.

“That’s how they look at it. They go home and use their PC with DSL or cable modems and they are clicking on something and it is instantaneous. Then they come to work and it’s not as fast. They say, ‘The network is running slow.’”

And determining exactly what, if anything, actually is running slow can be complicated and time-consuming. “We have to go and try to troubleshoot and ask, ‘What’s running slow? Is one specific application running slow or [is] all of it running slow?’”

The quick and easy answer to network latency issues, Ware says, is to upgrade network hardware to create more bandwidth — such as swapping out the limited-but-reliable frame relay infrastructure that Jackson, Miss.-based Cellular South uses in favor of a higher-speed Ethernet solution. But Ware provides network support for 85 retail stores and mall kiosks, so going “easy” would mean overloading tight technology budgets.

Cellular South is the largest privately held wireless provider in the country, licensed to serve a population area of more than five million people. As such, it has invested heavily in improving call quality and coverage for current and potential subscribers. Since 2004, for instance, its text messaging business has grown more than 500 percent. Nonetheless, the internal network that supports the business must be in line with corporate realities.

“We were looking for a way to solve bandwidth problems without having to upgrade all of our circuits,” Ware says.

Ware’s solution for Cellular South bandwidth limitations was to “save bandwidth” by compressing the data traffic along its wide area network — achieved by employing web acceleration compression software.

Compression removes non-essential information from data being moved from one location to another on the network, and then reassembles that data in its original form following the transfer. By “squeezing” data, network traffic is reduced and delivery of information accelerated.

Cellular South implemented WebRider from Dayton, Ohio-based Stampede Technologies a year and a half ago, and the “network is slow” calls from store managers and associates have stopped, Ware says. He estimates that Cellular South has achieved about a 77 percent improvement in network traffic without the substantial investment that comes with new hardware. “It was more cost-effective to do the web acceleration than upgrade all of our circuits.”

WebRider is a hardware/software tool for maximizing the performance and bandwidth utilization of web-based enterprise applications. A hardware appliance is implemented at the headquarters’ data center; a software client is installed at the store location.

Replicated branch model
Stampede vice president of sales Rob Courtney says web-optimization technology is well suited for retail and financial services organizations that have wide geographic footprints, since they largely operate under a “replicated branch” model. “They have lots of similar branches in terms of infrastructure, applications deployed to the branch and network topology,” and they are often hindered by bandwidth limitations.

Retailers “continue to push the envelope by trying to deploy more applications to drive revenue and customer relationship management and by using portals and the web to do functions like time and attendance and inventory management,” Courtney says. “What happens then is that it stresses the network infrastructure in terms of bandwidth that they have out there.”

Speaking at an IT symposium last October, analysts with Stamford, Conn.-based technology research and advisory company Gartner said that organizations often overspend on network product and services.

The Gartner analysts suggested that organizations will collectively overspend on network upgrades by as much as $100 billion annually over the next five years, and advised companies to utilize web-optimization solutions to reduce network bandwidth first, rather than simply upgrade to achieve greater bandwidth.

Bandwidth requirements will grow by an average of 35 percent annually, they said, but optimization can offer a three-and-a-half-year window to forestall major upgrades.

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