Peribit Plugs In Hard Drive

Peribit Networks Inc. today took the wraps off two new devices designed to boost wide-area network (WAN) performance (see Peribit Unveils New Products).

Peribit claims its product lineup can improve network performance by reducing latency and managing bandwidth as well as compressing, caching, and accelerating data. The SR-100 is an addition to the Sequence Reducer family of products, and the SM-500 is the first of Peribit's new Sequence Mirror range, which include their own built-in hard drives for caching data.

According to Peribit, the SR-100 offers a compressed output of up to 155 Mbit/s, and can support as many as 2000 "tunnels." These could be, for example, IPsec links with other Peribit devices. The figures given by Peribit for the SM-500 are compressed output of up to 20 Mbit/s and an upper limit of 120 "tunnels."

However, it is worth noting that the products have not been independently tested, although Michelle McLean, director of product marketing at Peribit, says the SR-100 is undergoing testing at the moment. She would not say who was carrying it out.

Peribit is not the only player in this part of the market. The SR-100 will be coming up against the Accelerator System 9000 device from Expand Networks Inc., which was launched in January.According to Expand, the 9000 offers a compressed output of up to 200 Mbit/s and can support up to 1400 remote sites. However, these figures, like Peribit's, have not been independently tested.

Despite the lack of independent testing, the SM-500's built-in 500-gigabyte hard drive has still been attracting attention.

Lynne Nye, president of analyst firm APM Advisors, believes that the drive, which stores data sent over the WAN, could be a key selling point. "This is unique for its breadth of features and functions I don't know of anybody who has as much of the packet-caching capacity," he says.

Packet caching reduces the amount of data that has to be sent over the network by identifying and storing identical pieces of information. For example, if two employees were sending amended versions of a presentation across the WAN, packet caching would identify the parts of the file that have already been sent and store them on the hard drive. This aims to prevent "repetitive" data from clogging up the network.

Peribit also unveiled the latest version of its Sequence Reduction System software today, which it claims can accelerate application performance.— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum