Sitara releases QoS appliance

Sitara Networks, the provider of solutions that intelligently integrate applications and networks for service providers and enterprises, announces the local availability of the industry's first complete Quality Of Service (QoS) appliance - QoSWORKS.

Gordon Barry, director of Sitara Networks South Africa says that QoS bridging appliances, such as QoSWORKS, offer a management solution to the bandwidth squeeze. "SA has not had much exposure yet to bridging QoS appliances, and increasing bandwidth capability is commonly the first response to network performance degradation, using routers." He claims that these routing QoS appliances do not offer monitoring or reporting options to network managers and do not offer the flexibility or ease of installation as a bridging appliance.

QoSWORKS eliminates the crush of network traffic generated by email, Web browsing and streaming media, which debilitates the performance of crucial business applications, through the multiple tools it contains that deploy automatically to manage a wide range of traffic types. "In other words," he clarifies, "the appliance can be told which information must flow through the network and bandwidth over other less mission-critical information. You can install a policy specific to your network applications, working hours, routine network usage and bandwidth capabilities to maximise the use of applications and flow of data in the business."

"The QoS concept is not new but presently there are only two bridging QoS appliances available in the world market, making it an unknown product offering," continues Barry who specifies that only Sitara has a local office. "QoSWORKS will enable the deployment of demanding e-business applications that companies are installing under customer relationship and e-commerce strategies while protecting performance and network efficiency," he comments.

Moreover Sitara Networks promises network managers, through the combination of most of today's most popular QoS tools, to alleviate the headaches and avoid the costs of deploying multiple point network performance products.

"QoSWORKS is more cost effective, easy to install and configure than the competitive products, as well as being scaleable, all proven by Independent research company, The Tolly Group," he reminds.

Working as an edge device, the QoSWORKS unit is physically installed behind the router remote offices, either by enterprises or their service providers. Other features include class-based queuing, TCP rate shaping, packet-size optimisation, and an algorithm for fair allocation of bandwidth by connection as well as caching.

The QoS vendor guarantees improved consistent response time for latency-sensitive applications, fine-grain control over bulk transfers such as e-mail and Web browsing, and a fair share of bandwidth for all connections within a class. "All this very simply translates into the alleviation of wasted time from delays, a higher acceptance of user applications that eliminates staff's technology related frustration," comments Barry.

"Now, for the first time, local network managers have one economical, easy to manage, non-disruptive QoS appliance that will prioritise and manage all types of traffic at the edge of the network, taking mission-critical business communication to the levels it needs to reach to stay competitive," he concludes.