A Watertight Upgrade

About a year ago, National Waterworks found itself in some hot water. The leading distributor of water and waste-water transmission products had been relying on a sprawling 56K frame-relay network that connected its 135 branches across the United States. But as the company became more tech-savvy, its network bandwidth wasn't cutting it, and employees were complaining. The strain also was impacting the performance of its mission-critical ERP application, which manages orders, shipments and vital business aspects for National Waterworks.

"We wanted to find a way to increase the ERP application response time, while still allowing our employees to continue to use the Internet, intranet and e-mail applications without the significant expense of upgrading frame-relay lines," explains Neil Brinson, systems manager at National Waterworks.

The cost of upgrading to the next level of frame-relay connection was more than double what National Waterworks was paying, and would have had to be paid out each month. Enter ADCom, a Norcross, Ga.-based WAN integrator that has been working with National Waterworks for more than six years. In the late 1990s, National Waterworks had enlisted ADCom's help as its partner in the initial deployment of its AT&T frame-relay network; ADCom knew that National Waterworks was struggling to stay afloat with the technology it already had.

So ADCom did what any honest, relationship-savvy solution provider would do--it suggested a solution that would optimize National Waterworks' existing network, while costing considerably less than a network upgrade. ADCom proposed a solution from one of its newest partners, Peribit Networks, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based provider of WAN optimization hardware and software.

"They saw our struggles and suggested we take a look at Peribit," Brinson says.

Adds Craig Henry, national account manager at ADCom: "We could have upgraded them to a higher speed on the network, but that would increase their monthly recurring costs. With the Peribit solution, it was a one-time capital investment, and the return on investment (ROI) was quick."

The Solution

More specifically, ADCom deployed 10 Peribit Sequence Reducers (SRs), which are based on Peribit's proprietary Molecular Sequence Reduction (MSR) technology. SR boxes compress data into small packets at one end and then basically decompress it at the other end. That frees a network of WAN traffic, resulting in more network capacity and better performance.

ADCom determined that National Waterworks would be best served by a Peribit SR-50 at its host site located at the Thomasville, Ga.-based corporate headquarters, and by Peribit SR-20s at its branch offices. SR-50s can be licensed to reduce throughput speed by 256 Kbps to 20 Mbps; SR-20s can reduce throughput speed by 64 Kbps to 2 Mbps. The SRs operate independently of other network equipment and can be placed in the flow of traffic between a LAN switch and WAN router, or attached to a switch's or router's port.

The easy installation of the Peribit solution was especially attractive to National Waterworks: It can be set up by a nontechnical person using a Web-based wizard that walks the user through a 10-minute installation process. ADCom recommends the correct box size for throughput, supplies the box and sends it to a branch office.

Even there, ADCom helped National Waterworks contain costs. "We are able to do the installation, but it's such an easy box to install that service wasn't required," Henry says. "It was a huge benefit for them not to have to pay for installation."

The Evaluation

At first, National Waterworks was skeptical about the Peribit solution, wondering if it was too good to be true. But what changed the company's mind was evaluating the offerings for itself, Brinson says.

"They sent us two units--we installed one in the data center and one in a branch, and sent an IT staff member to the remote site to help us evaluate and get the feedback," he says. "We ran a lot of tests with a file transfer running in the background to eat up as much bandwidth as possible, and Peribit was able to maintain the application response time on our ERP applications, which was subsecond...There's nothing like being able to get your hands on the equipment and try it out."

For the long term, ADCom's Henry says the Peribit solution is not a "band-aid solution" because National Waterworks will be able to use the Peribit SRs throughout the network with multiple types of technologies, not just the frame-relay network. Brinson also expects to deploy more boxes as National Waterworks continues to increase its number of applications.

In general, Henry says ADCom has had a great relationship with National Waterworks, one based on open communication.

"When they have questions about new technologies, they come to us, or if we hear about new things in the market, we'll let them know," Henry says. "Any support or network issues National Waterworks has are a huge concern of ours."

Brinson adds that he is most comfortable with longer-term solution providers like ADCom, depending on them, trusting them and, ultimately, sticking with them.