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:
“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)