F5 upgrade speeds, secures application delivery

F5 is enabling machine-to-machine communications among its BIG-IP acceleration devices to secure and speed links among corporate offices.

Previously these Web front-ends accelerated traffic just between Web servers and individual users, but with the box-to-box support, they can speed up traffic transfers between sites. The traffic is secured with SSL encryption, and the device can rate shape per application, support quality of service and optimize TCP to reduce delays, the company says.

In the future this capability could be used to secure links between businesses and their cloud computing service providers, F5 says. The company competes with Array, Citrix, Crescendo and others.

Device-to-device links enable creation of iSessions between Big-IP boxes that are marked by context-aware optimization that takes into account specifics of individual sessions and customizes which optimization methods will be used.

For example, Big-IPs might not compress traffic coming in over a broadband connection because it will get through faster on a wire with ample bandwidth and no compression. If traffic is coming over a wireless connection, compression might be invoked because the reduced traffic volume will result in faster response times despite the delay caused by compression and decompression.

The 10.0 software also comes with application templates that let customers rapidly configure Bit-IP devices to optimize that particular application. Initially the company has templates for 13 applications and will add more each quarter. It will use its DevCentral developer's Web site to publish them so customers can use them without waiting for a formal software version release.

F5 is also introducing a new high-end device, Big-IP 8900, supporting 12 Gb/s of L7 throughput, 58,000 SSL transactions per second, and 8 Gb/s of hardware compression. The device costs $90,000.