How It Works

Riverbed Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: RVBD) manufactures a family of products branded “Steelhead”. These devices make WAN (Wide Area Network) connections go faster. They achieve this in two ways:

  1. Steelhead devices eliminate much of the TCP “chatter” when data packets are being transferred. This chatter causes latency, and latency means that packets travel slowly across a network even if there is plenty of bandwidth.

    TCP “chatter” causes inefficiency
    WAN round trip time reduced by at least 65%



  2. Steelhead devices inspect data as it is transferred, and assigns each unique pattern with a small binary tag. So the IZR logo at the top of this page may be assigned the tag “01”. The text of War And Peace might be assigned the tag “10”. Once a piece of digital content has been transferred between 2 Steelhead devices, it does not have to be transferred again; only the tag is transferred over the remote link. This means that the amount of data which actually needs to move over the remote link is greatly reduced.

To arrange for a live demonstration at your offices, or to arrange a 14-day risk-free trial, please contact us now.