One for the Road

The Venturi can operate in conjunction with a proxy server or firewall and offers a 6GB hard drive for caching. Image compression is provided for both GIF and JPEG formats. Management via SNMP is available, but the device's security is rudimentary, using only the basic authorization scheme of a custom-built Web server residing on the unit. A helpful aspect of the Venturi is its ability to handle failure gracefully; in the event of a problem, the device is bypassed so you won't lose your connection.

Designed primarily for satellite, wireless and dial-up clients, the Venturi resides near the edge of the network, acting as a proxy for all specified TCP-based requests. All traffic not configured to pass through the Venturi is simply sent via normal channels. There are a few caveats here. Distribution and centralized management of clients is not provided, making management and upgrades of the client tedious. And the cost is quite shocking: Venturi starts at $30,000 and goes up to $500,000, depending on the size, backup and redundancy requirements of the business. Training and integration are included in the cost, though the need for education appears to be minimal since the product is intuitive and integrates easily into your network architecture.

Use of traffic-management devices could also be a problem when using Venturi for acceleration services. Since TCP traffic is compressed and transported via a proprietary protocol that rides on top of UDP (User Datagram Protocol), classifying and managing that traffic on a WAN link would be difficult.

A single Venturi appliance can support 1,800 concurrent users. Venturi will certainly meet the needs of small and midsize businesses needing a boost in performance and an increase in bandwidth capacity.

Traffic Reduction

I tested the Venturi in Network Computing's partner lab at Schneider National, in Green Bay, Wis. I set up the network in such a way that half the lab simulated a corporate campus and the other half a remote WAN site connected via a T1 link.

The process of setting up and configuring the Venturi was a snap, though the five-minute boot time was annoying. Management can be performed via a simple Web browser interface or via the console. SSH (Secure Shell) is available, but only for Fourelle engineers -- customers are not allowed to SSH into the device. I'm uncomfortable with this trend of offering devices that I can't manage in an emergency.

The Venturi uses a standard Intel-based architecture with a twist: An 8-MB flash card is used to boot the device. The configuration is also stored on the flash card, which is cool, since if you completely trash your configuration, you can simply get a new flash card. The device supports connections up to 10 Mbps, more than enough for the low-link environments for which this product was designed.

The Venturi Client

intercepts all specified TCP traffic on the desktop and communicates directly with the Venturi server. The server handles the request normally and returns the reply via the proprietary protocol.

Because my T1 was relatively uncongested, I used Ganymede's Chariot, from NetIQ Corp., to generate additional traffic on the wire. I was able to saturate the T1 with the traffic generated by Chariot. The speed improvement when using the Venturi was nominal (Venturi is really designed for small pipes -- less than 256-Kbps links).

Compression of the data was excellent, however. Without the Venturi, the requested Web page was 50 KB, containing both text and images. When the device was inserted into the network and the Venturi client activated, the same data was compressed to only 23 KB. With an average 2:1 compression ratio, Venturi could easily double your network capacity without your purchasing additional bandwidth.

In all my tests, I left the Venturi's caching features turned off. I wanted to see the performance increases just from the protocol and compression, not the cache. The cache can't be used without the client, so its utility is limited to users making requests via the Venturi server.

Configuration of the client is straightforward. You can specify what types of TCP traffic to compress or simply allow Venturi to handle all TCP traffic. A check box is available in the client to specify "all Internet services" as well as one to select handling of all TCP-based traffic. Fourelle cautions against checking all TCP traffic and suggests Venturi handle all Internet services -- SMTP, POP3, HTTP and IMAP -- since problems could arise in using it with custom applications. Fourelle suggests staging tests for use with custom applications and database traffic before deployment to ensure there are no adverse effects of using the compression features of Venturi with such applications.

Speedy Results

After I'd done some preliminary testing in my controlled environment, I connected a Microsoft Windows 98 laptop to a data-capable wireless phone and dialed up to an Earthlink account (getting a whopping 14.4 Kbps -- phenomenal considering I dialed up from deep within the lab). I configured the Venturi client to use a server on Fourelle's corporate network. The Venturi personal client is configured as a proxy to the Web browser, and supports Microsoft Windows 95/98/ NT 4.0, Apple Computer Mac OS 8, Sun Microsystems Solaris and Linux platforms.

First, I requested several large Web pages with the Venturi client turned off. Next, I repeated the test (yes, I cleared the Web browser's cache first) with the client turned on. I was impressed at the benefits the device provided. A 156-KB download that took two minutes without the Venturi turned into a 57-KB download taking only one minute. Similarly, a 295-KB Web page took more than three minutes to download without the device's assistance; it became a 91-KB page taking just more than one minute to download with the device. That's an astounding difference that makes a wireless connection almost bearable!

These results were obtained with JPEG and GIF compression of 40 percent, with a color palette setting of 16 colors. By reducing the color palette further and increasing the compression ratio (at the price of image quality), I would expect to see even better results.

Remote users will see a benefit for general-purpose use only if all their Internet-based traffic is directed through the Venturi. All other traffic flows normally.

Is the Venturi worth the price? From a user's perspective -- undoubtedly yes. From a support and management perspective -- maybe. The cost could run high, and supporting the clients could be problematic, unless you trust your end users to install and manage the clients themselves. That's a decision not too many companies will be willing to make.