REVIEWS

Shiva And Stampede Vie For Your Caching Vote

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Sure, you could upgrade y our modems, but that wouldn't get y ou very far. Faster modems just don't cut down on the latency that is inherent with telephony communication and ISDN is not yet a viable solution. So what are you to do?

You might want to take a look at a remote-node caching solution. We did just that when we examined two "presidential" hopefuls in our San Mateo, Calif., lab. Be forewarned, however, that although Shiva Corp.'s Powerburst 2.0 and Stampede Technologies' TurboGold 1.0 showed better performance in terms of file-based applications, they will not cache client/server or terminal-emulation communications. If the majority of your remote users dial in to get access to Microsoft Exchange and the Internet, these products won't do much for you--yet.

Shiva's Powerburst (formally from Airsoft) received the most ele ctoral votes from our testers. The popular vote was too close to call, mainly because of Shiva's less-then-expected performance. Still, Shiva showed that it has put some thought into how to make the s oftware easy to use and manage in larg e rollouts. Stampede's TurboGold 1.0, though faster in many of the tests, didn't show the maturity that Shiva's product possessed.

Performance gains ranged from barley noticeable to outstanding. Both products speeded execution of remote programs to the tune of 70 percent. But when it came down to more common applications, such as e-mail and database programs, neither lived up to its hype.

Both can run as an NT Service or as a NetWare Loadable Module (NLMs). If you have special needs or limitations, the pair provides the option of running the server component on a separate computer. Another limitation to note: If you're a NetWare 4.1 shop you'll feel the frustration of another application that is not fully Novell Directory Services (NDS)-compliant. Stampede plans a n NDS-compliant version in a future release.

Remote-node caching solutions are comprised of client and server pieces that work in tandem to cache frequently accessed data from a remote PC. Under ideal circumstances, a client pulls data from its cache at every chance. This reduces the amount of information that needs to traverse a slow connection.

The trick to making this work is keeping the two sets of data current. These products attempt to do this using algorithms to compare the time stamps of the two instances of data. If the time stamps don't match, a checksum is performed on the server data. If the checksums are different, the data is transferred over the connection. Unfortunately, this process can add overhead--and decrease performance when compared with an uncached connection.

Shiva Corp. Powerburst 2.0 The Shiva candidate is a product for the people. It is a well- developed solution that suits its constituents' needs . Although Powerburst had some performance problems, it makes a solid all-around solution.

With version 2.0, network administrators can set up a single configuration file and have all clients obtain their startup parameters from a single location. Shiva also provides for automatic upgrades when an older version of the software is found by its agent (server component). This practically eliminates the overhead associated with version control.

On the client side, Powerburst's statistics window indicates how many file calls are being saved. The accelerator bar shows the user when a drive is accelerated by Powerburst (called a Powerdrive) and when they are in use. The interface makes error and refresh messages easy to see; if users want to ensure that they have connectivity with the agent, a helpful ping utility alerts them.