Exinda boosts traffic control to 10Gbps

Exinda Networks Inc. has released an upgraded version of its top of line network optimization appliance which can shape network traffic at up to 10 Gigabits per second.

The model 100062 – which replaces the 10060 – is a 2U-sized data centre class appliance that can handle up to 400,000 users in large enterprises or service providers.

Like all six models of Exinda appliances, the Network Optimization Suite gives Layer 7 level visibility into application traffic and with policy-based bandwidth allocation, Cory Badcock, the company’s director inline product management, said in an interview.

It would prove useful in segmenting traffic at universities, he said, where the institution has traffic generated by the administration and by students.

The 10062 has an optimization capacity of 310 Mbps, or 45,000 connections, and an edge cache capacity of 225 Mpbs.

It costs US$175,000.

The 10062 is one of five new or updated models in the lineup of Toronto-based Exinda. The others are the 4010 for branches, the 4061 (with more RAM than the previous version), the 6062 (replaces the 6060) and the 8062 (replaces the 8060).

Version 6.4 of the firmware gives improved visibility with new layer 7 application signatures for applications like LinkedIn, Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Skydrive.

“It allows network administrators to more easily identify that traffic and make decisions on how they want to treat it,” said Badcock. Previously if a staffer used Skydrive it would have shown up as general TCP traffic. Identifiying app traffic with more precision allows network administrators to better decide whether it needs more bandwidth or if certain users should be give priority access.

Appliances can now create a baseline application performance score, which allows them to understand how an app is performing. Until now administrators had to create the baseline themselves. Baseline scoring makes it easier to configure the network.

Administrators will also be able to cluster multiple Exinda appliances either through higher availability or load balanced environments. Appliances can share configuration and monitoring policies as if a single appliance, or one could be set up for failover protection.

Finally, the firmware update gives faster optimization performance of SMBv2 and MAPI traffic, which will benefit organizations with large file shares or Microsoft Exchange.