DBAM Systems EP60 Test Executive Summary

Transcription

1 Test Executive Summary A Broadband-Testing Report

2 First published February 2007 (V1.0) Published by Broadband-Testing La Calade, Moux, Aude, France Tel : +33 (0) Fax : +33 (0) info@broadband-testing.co.uk Internet : Broadband-Testing All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, photocopied, stored on a retrieval system, or transmitted without the express written consent of the authors. Please note that access to or use of this Report is conditioned on the following: 1. The information in this Report is subject to change by Broadband-Testing without notice. 2. The information in this Report, at publication date, is believed by Broadband-Testing to be accurate and reliable, but is not guaranteed. All use of and reliance on this Report are at your sole risk. Broadband-Testing is not liable or responsible for any damages, losses or expenses arising from any error or omission in this Report. 3. NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED ARE GIVEN BY Broadband-Testing. ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT ARE DISCLAIMED AND EXCLUDED BY Broadband-Testing. IN NO EVENT SHALL Broadband-Testing BE LIABLE FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR INDIRECT DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFIT, REVENUE, DATA, COMPUTER PROGRAMS, OR OTHER ASSETS, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY THEREOF. 4. This Report does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation or guarantee of any of the products (hardware or software) tested or the hardware and software used in testing the products. The testing does not guarantee that there are no errors or defects in the products, or that the products will meet your expectations, requirements, needs or specifications, or that they will operate without interruption. 5. This Report does not imply any endorsement, sponsorship, affiliation or verification by or with any companies mentioned in this report. 6. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names used in this Report are the trademarks, service marks, and trade names of their respective owners, and no endorsement of, sponsorship of, affiliation with, or involvement in, any of the testing, this Report or Broadband-Testing is implied, nor should it be inferred. ii Broadband-Testing

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS...III BROADBAND-TESTING...IV EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: DBAM SYSTEMS EP The Scenario... 1 Broadband-Testing Findings... 1 Conclusions... 4 TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1 Creating A Rule...2 Figure 2 Inspector 7 Showing Applications - And Bandwidth Usage- Over The Internet Connection...3 Figure 3 Using Criteria To Create An On The Fly Rule To Block MSN Usage...4 Broadband-Testing iii

4 BROADBAND-TESTING Broadband-Testing is Europe s foremost independent network testing facility and consultancy organisation for broadband and network infrastructure products. Based in the south of France, Broadband-Testing offers extensive labs, demo and conference facilities. From this base, Broadband-Testing provides a range of specialist IT, networking and development services to vendors and end-user organisations throughout Europe, SEAP and the United States. Broadband-Testing is an associate of the following: NSS Network Testing Laboratories (specialising in security product testing) Broadband Vantage (broadband consultancy group) Limbo Creatives (bespoke software development) Broadband-Testing Laboratories are available to vendors and end-users for fully independent testing of networking, communications and security hardware and software. Broadband-Testing Laboratories operates an Approval scheme which enables products to be short-listed for purchase by end-users, based on their successful approval. Output from the labs, including detailed research reports, articles and white papers on the latest network-related technologies, are made available free of charge on our web site at The conference centre in Moux in the south of France is the ideal location for sales training, general seminars and product launches, and Broadband-Testing can also provide technical writing services for sales, marketing and technical documentation, as well as documentation and testhouse facilities for product development. Broadband-Testing Consultancy Services offers a range of network consultancy services including network design, strategy planning, Internet connectivity and product development assistance. iv Broadband-Testing

5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: DBAM SYSTEMS EP60 The Scenario Never, in the world of IT, has there been more emphasis on the use of the Internet and WAN (Wide Area Network) to carry critical business applications, services and data. For Service Providers, the opportunity to deliver live video over the Internet, for example, presents a real business opportunity yet, due to the delays inherent in WAN and especially Internet - data delivery, technologically, this is a difficult service to deliver. For enterprises, looking to push their business applications globally, out to each and every office across the world, the WAN/Internet and its inherent latency issues (delay) and unpredictability create real problems for fast, reliable service and application delivery. So what is the answer? Controlling that delivery whatever the service or application in order to make it fast, reliable and secure, that is the answer. DBAM Systems, with its range of Exbander Precision appliances, is looking to provide the answer to these problems with a tuneable, plug n play solution to fit all sizes and shapes of company and their requirements (for more detail check out: This report focuses on DBAM s entry-level product the EP60. Designed for the small/medium business, or branch/satellite office installation, at 999, the device significantly undercuts the pricing of any opposition product to date, yet appears to offer considerably more from a features perspective. These claims were put to the test by Broadband-Testing over a four-week period of intensive testing in several different environments, all using real, live Internet connections and real data/video traffic. So was this a case of too good to be true or the uncovering of a genuinely marketshaking (and shaping) product? Broadband-Testing Findings The EP60 is designed to optimise and accelerate WAN/Internet application and service performance a complex task in as simple a way as possible. Given its target market, small/medium businesses and branch offices, the idea is to remove as much of that complexity as possible, given that there will not be a team of IT experts on hand in each location. To this end, the product works well, providing a five-minute first-time install which simply lets you choose the type of business you are average, security conscious etc and automatically creates a business profile to suit that business type. This is real 90:90 rule solution will suit 90% of businesses, 90% of the time so a good start. What is really impressive thereafter, is the amount of fine-tuning that can be carried out if required in order to hit the 100:100 rule. We tested the EP60 using a variety of real data and video applications, across different Internet connections. We found performance to be very consistent the Broadband-Testing

6 device has been in our test labs for over a month and impressive. Data delivery solutions such as data backup for example can be accelerated dramatically; we saw a 900% improvement even when moving archived data files across the Internet, where you wouldn t necessarily expect to see any performance acceleration at all. With voice and video using the world s best-selling voice/video conferencing solution - we saw 2:1 compression, meaning that we halved the amount of bandwidth required to take that same, working, voice/video steam across the Internet. Moreover, we were testing between offices in the UK and South Africa, on a link with latency in excess of 550ms. Bearing in mind that voice doesn t like any latency above 50ms, for us to achieve a working solution across this connection and halve the required bandwidth is impressive. Creating new rules for controlling traffic is made easier by a how to style task wizard and by being able to literally shape how much bandwidth you want a particular traffic type to have, by using the mouse to drag a rules bandwidth share of the pie to increase or decrease its share. Figure 1 Creating A Rule While the EP60 is defined by DBAM as a WAN/Internet bandwidth shaper/optimiser and traffic accelerator, it is also a first class WAN monitoring device. Everything that goes across the WAN/Internet connection is visible and easily identified; this is the most comprehensive WAN traffic management product 2 Broadband-Testing

7 we have had in our labs and it is not even described as one! While traditional network management tools provide detailed information on a level where only the extremely technically minded could really benefit, the EP60 s management software Precision Start lets you see exactly which applications are running (Layer7) and how much bandwidth they are using. This is both incredibly useful to a network manager for controlling user activity, and for capacity planning/modelling. Figure 2 Inspector 7 Showing Applications - And Bandwidth Usage- Over The Internet Connection The EP60 even goes beyond the visibility factor i.e. letting you see exactly what (and how much) traffic is passing across your WAN/Internet connection by letting you pro-actively take control of that traffic. Here we get into the finetuning aspects of the product. For example, the working profile chosen during the initial installation, may provide most of the controls on user behaviour and traffic prioritisation that you need say giving more bandwidth to video than but only at certain times of day (all this and more is tuneable in Precision Start) but certain unexpected or new user activities may mean you need to make changes, sometimes on the fly. For example, we tested the EP60 by creating P2P (Peer to Peer) traffic in the form of MSN Messenger sessions, which we then defined as being banned by our virtual customer we generated for the purposes of the testing. We were able to identify the MSN traffic, find out exactly who was using it and then block those users from using that application. This whole procedure took around 60 seconds from start to finish. Broadband-Testing

8 Figure 3 Using Criteria To Create An On The Fly Rule To Block MSN Usage Conclusions As a WAN/Internet packet shaping and traffic optimising device, the DBAM EP60 offers what we see as class-leading performance, with a unique approach to managing the traffic that makes a mockery of its low price. The degree to which you can fine-tune the prioritisation, performance and management of that traffic is truly phenomenal. At the same time, the appliance can be set up in five minutes and satisfy most users requirements with no further intervention. That is also allows you to provide very finite levels of security per application, user and group of users is a huge (and unexpected) bonus. So what we have here is an all-in-one traffic and user management, optimisation and security device that has no obvious peers and at an incredibly low price. As such we have no hesitation in awarding it our prestigious (and rare) gold award. Our congratulations go to DBAM on developing such an outstanding product. 4 Broadband-Testing