Experience with Steelhead Mobile across Asia (part 1)

In the last month or so I have been traveling across most of Asia giving sales and technical updates to our partners around the region. Riverbed has a physical presence in 16 countries around Asia Pacific & Japan, and we are active in over 20 countries, often in several cities in each - so it's been a busy couple of weeks !

During the course of these travels, I've found myself presented with an incredibly wide variety of network connectivity situations - each presenting their own challenges. Some of these have been truly startling, so I thought I'd share a few anecdotes with you and relate how having Steelhead Mobile on my PC has saved me time and money in an obvious and demonstrable way.

For example, I was in sunny Makati city in the Philippines two weeks ago and needed to download some revised presentation content for my partner update session that afternoon.

Unfortunately, the only connectivity available to me at the time was a 56k dialup circuit. Remember those ? Back in the day, 56kbps was flying, but for me trying to download 20 Megabytes worth of Powerpoint from our US servers, with a deadline fast approaching, it was a nail-biting experience.

Luckily for me however the presence of Riverbed's Steelhead Mobile PC client Acceleration software saved the day. Not only did it compress the data from 20 Megabytes down to about 3, it also dramatically accelerated the transfer time so I could get the information I needed and make it to my appointment armed with the all latest information. What a lifesaver ! Without this technology, I may still be there downloading now.