A Solution to the Broadband Bind

I still get print versions of some of the industry's best-known weekly magazines.  I find that even though they've gotten a lot thinner in recent times, holding a physical copy in my hand gives the contents a bit more importance, and I find that I am more likely to read them.  I seldom make the effort to visit the same magazines' web sites.

This week it worked just that way.  I received the June 12, 2010 issue of Information Week in the mail, and saw the cover story.  The cover teaser reads, "Broadband Bind: Why every US business has a stake in improved speeds, coverage, and competition."  Right up our alley here at Riverbed.  And definitely an article that I would have missed if it had only been published on the web site.

It's a very interesting and important article that discusses how applications such as video, voice, backups and disaster recovery require ever-more and ever-larger chunks of bandwidth, and that small office and home offices have a hard time getting adequate bandwidth that is reliable and consistently fast to work with those applications.  And that corporations, especially those with remote branch offices, have a difficult time getting enough bandwidth to connect all of their locations.  The author, Jonathan Feldman, goes on to discuss governmental regulations, how barriers to entry keep competitors out of the broadband market, and the extreme cost of bandwidth.

But it's not until the end of the second-to-last paragraph in the article, on page 29 (the article starts on page 20) that the author writes anything about the efficiency of the data traversing the network:

"Relief comes when you use the available capacity in a more efficient manner," says Mark Butler director of product marketing with Internet services company Internap.

And then he fails to comment on that important statement.

The truth is that improved network efficiency is the best answer to these problems, and not one that should be buried nine pages into the article.  Thousands of companies, including more than half of the Global 100, have already seen reductions in data traffic of 70%, 80% and even more through the simple deployment of Riverbed Steelhead Appliances, Steelhead Mobile, and application-specific acceleration modules for video, backups, disaster recovery, and many other applications.  These companies report that once Riverbed solutions have been implemented they can put off upgrading their wide area networks for years, and in many cases have been able to downgrade their wide area networks after they implement Steelhead appliances because of the reduction in WAN traffic, often saving tens of thousands of dollars per month, or more.

The right short-term answer to these broadband bottlenecks is WAN Optimization, not overhauling the nation's broadband infrastructure.

Comments

[Mead]

Let me know when you can talk Comcast and ATT into deploying WAN optimization to the edge for its customers. I think it would be rather cool to be able to run a soft client and get traffic optimization to my ISP, maybe they could speed up its adoption by offering discounts to subscribers who are willing to run the soft client to save on bandwidth usage.