Riverbed Accelerates SSL Traffic over WAN Links

Riverbed Technology released the fourth generation of its Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) featuring the ability to accelerate SSL traffic. Specifically, Riverbed has added SSL acceleration to its existing support for site-to-site VPNs and its site-to-site IPSEC option.




Previously, WAN acceleration platforms required enterprises either to turn off SSL to achieve acceleration, or destroy the trust model by requiring SSL certificates and private keys to be copied and moved outside of the data center onto remote servers, a process commonly referred to as certificate faking or certificate spoofing. Alternatives such as SSL offload accelerate traffic moving over the Internet by offloading CPU cycles from a web server so that it can handle more requests but have minimal impact on TCP, data, or application optimizations.



Riverbed said it can now accelerate SSL across the WAN without compromising the security trust model, while eliminating distributed key management problems.



Riverbed has also added enhancements for Web-based business applications that are now a critical component of day-to-day business operations for its global customer base. Most SSL traffic on the network is HTTPS. RiOS 4.0 further accelerates HTTP and now can accelerate HTTPS, the underlying protocols that support web-based business applications such as SAP, Siebel, Peoplesoft, IBM Websphere and MS Sharepoint, among others.



RiOS 4.0 also contains enhancements to its intelligent learning mechanism that discovers and tracks objects on Web pages, such as images, scripts and cascading style sheets.

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