About this Guide

This guide describes the Cisco WAN and application optimization solution and provides detailed technical information about the design and implementation of the solution.

The WAN and application optimization solution combines Cisco products and technologies to deliver solutions to specific WAN and application optimization challenges. This guide helps its readers understand these challenges, and design and implement networking infrastructures to meet the challenges.

1.1  How This Guide Is Organized

This guide contains the following chapters:

•Customer Challenges

This chapter describes the challenges customers face as the number of branch offices and their networking demands increase.

•WAN and Application Optimization Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the WAN and application optimization solution, with a focus on business requirements.

•Cisco Monitoring Instrumentation

This chapter describes the monitoring instrumentation provided in the WAN and application optimization solution.

•Traffic Classification

This chapter describes how traffic is classified in the WAN and application optimization solution.

•WAN and Application Optimization Technologies

This chapter describes the specific technologies used in the WAN and application optimization solution.

•Network Control Technologies

This chapter describes the need to address varying requirements of different classes of network traffic. Deterministic degradation is the fundamental technique of network control optimization. The network operator determines how different classes of traffic are treated, based on their requiremets and relative importance in the network.

•Network Management

This chapter describes the network management technologies used in the WAN and application optimization solution.

•Branch Design Considerations

This chapter provides detailed descriptions, with configuration examples, of the various deployment models used in the WAN and application optimization solution.

1.2  Intended Audience

This guide is for technical personnel involved in the specification, design, and implementation of specific WAN and application optimization solutions.