Packeteer , looking to be the leader in the burgeoning
market for boosting the performance of applications on wide-area networks
(WAN), rolled out new plug-ins for reading Flash-based video over the
Internet.
The application classification software modules let Packeteer PacketShaper
customers pinpoint and contain Flash-based IP video traffic that can impede
network and application performance.
Packeteer CEO Dave Cote told internetnews.com that identifying Flash
impinging application performance over the WAN.
For example, IT administrators are complaining that corporate employees
access Web-based video content from sites such as YouTube, shutting out
customer service and other business transactions.
“The plug-ins being introduced by Packeteer will provide enormous help in
measuring and containing the impact of this traffic on business operations,”
said Jim Metzler, principal analyst with Ashton, Metzler & Associates, in a
statement.
Cote said the new plug-ins identify and classify Flash video streams from
YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Videos, ABC.com and ESPN.com.
Packeteer is also offering adapters for Flash players PPLive and TVUPlayer,
as well as podcast content readers for TVTonic, NewzCrawler, Juice,
WinPodder and RSS-Radio.
The Flash video plug-ins are available for free now to PacketShaper
customers.
Cote said providing such plug-ins, thereby bringing the number of
applications Packeteer classifies to well over 600, will help Packeteer stay
well ahead of rivals.
Fellow startups Riverbed Technologies and Expand Networks and networking
giants Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks
also play in the WAN optimization space, a market segment
that seemingly knows no bounds thanks to the proliferation of heavy
applications.
Packeteer today also launched an Intelligent Lifecycle Process (ILP)
methodology to help businesses pinpoint and reconcile performance issues for
networks and applications. The ILP will also determine the right WAN
optimization and acceleration technologies companies should apply.
Packeteer will offer businesses who choose to use ILP a free WAN performance
evaluation to gauge how much bandwidth applications are consuming and reveal
response times for key applications and networks.