Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is technology developed by Cisco Systems that optimizes the performance of any TCP-based application operating in a wide area network (WAN) environment while preserving and strengthening branch security. WAAS combines WAN optimization, acceleration of TCP-based applications, and Cisco's Wide Area File Services (WAFS) in a single appliance or blade. It is Cisco's attempt to keep WAN optimization residing firmly in the router, eliminating the need to deploy acceleration appliances throughout the infrastructure. The technology preserves TCP information within the network while offering the performance benefits that come along with using WAN optimization technology.
WAN optimization appliances have traditionally limited IT when it comes to maintaining functions such as security, Quality of Service, visibility, and monitoring end-to-end transactions because they tend to cause problems for most network monitoring devices and tools. By design, WAN Optimization “confuses” performance monitoring systems by changing packet header data.
Latest Release
Cisco's latest WAAS software release, announced at the 2007 Cisco Networkers conference, is the industry's first solution for both end-to-end monitoring and acceleration of application traffic.
Famous quotes containing the words wide, area, application and/or services:
“Bind us in time, O seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of ... every industrial area in the whole country.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list—the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)