"Discovery estimates that it has seen a 700 to 800 percent improvement in file transfer rate over 1Gb/s link since implementing Signiant."

through⋅put [throo-poot] - noun

In communication networks, such as Ethernet or packet radio, throughput is the average rate of successful message delivery over a communication channel.

band⋅width ef⋅fi⋅cien⋅cy [band-width i-fish-uh n-see] - noun

The bandwidth efficiency, in percentage is the achieved throughput related to the net bit-rate in bit/s of a digital communication channel. For example, if the throughput is 70 Mb/s in a 100 Mb/s Ethernet connection, the bandwidth efficiency is 70%.

dis⋅ap⋅point⋅ed [dis-uh-poin-tid] - adjective

When companies try to move digital media over their WAN, in many cases the bandwidth efficiency and throughput results disappoint. Due to current network protocol limitations, bandwidth efficiency may only be 5 - 10% and when you need to move large files over long distances, business needs may not be met. This can have real economic impact - in terms of:

• Overpaying for Bandwidth
• Lost Productivity
• Delays in Delivering Content

WAN Acceleration software when deployed can achieve almost 100% of the theoretical network throughput, has immediate ROI, and can help meet your organization's business needs, resulting in the reduction in your monthly bandwidth expenses, increased productivity, and a more responsive organization.

The Limitations of TCP and the Impact on the Bandwidth Efficiency
Most applications transmit data using Transport Control Protocol (TCP) over the WAN. FTP is one example of an application that uses TCP; others include web browsing, email, iTunes, and CRM. In each case performance and throughput are affected by:

• The capacity of the network link - such as 155Mb/s

• The congestion on that link - the number of people or applications sharing the link

• The distance the data needs to travel as measured as latency and round-trip time- the time it takes for data to travel over the network and then acknowledge the receipt of that data.

Much has been written about how these factors affect the overall performance of a network. In short, when data needs to travel over long distances, in a network with average congestion - the overall throughput of the network can be reduced significantly. In general the longer the distance and the greater the capacity the more bandwidth efficiency will be impacted. It is not uncommon for the actual throughput to be 50%, 25%, or even 5% of theoretical. This inefficiency has real cost to your organization. The graph below depicts the performance results of TCP based on latency (as measured as distance):

Comparison Bandwidth Efficiency of Signiant vs. TCP for 40 GB Payload

 

The Cost of Bandwidth

One of the largest components of any monthly IT budget is the cost for network connectivity - either internet access or a private WAN. The "bandwidth" cost varies depending on the type of network, the speed, and your time commitment. Also these prices vary around the world based on the service provider and country providing them. The table below highlights the average cost for internet bandwidth in the United States (for the purpose of this paper - these will be the costs used).

Network Capacity	Cost / Month	Cost / Mb/s
1.5Mb/s (T1)	$ 300	$200
10Mb/s	$ 1,500	$150
45Mb/s (DS3)	$ 5,000	$111
100Mb/s	$ 7,500	$75
155Mb/s (OC3)	$ 10,000	$65
1Gb/s	$ 25,000	$25

 

Measuring the Cost of Lost Bandwidth

When purchasing network capacity, many people take the Cost / Month and divide that by the theoretical Network Capacity to get the Price / Capacity. If a 155Mb/s OC3 connection is costing you $10,000 per month - the expectation is that you are paying $65 per Mb/s per month. You also assume that for that same $10,000 per month you will be able to transmit nearly 52TB of data. So if your average digital media file size is 5GB, the assumption is that you can move 10,000 files or about $1 per file.

Now if you are only getting 50%, 25%, or 5% throughput - your assumptions are dramatically affected as demonstrated by the table below:

Efficiency	Network Capacity (Mb/s)	Cost/Mb/s	Total Monthly Throughput (TB)	Cost per 5GB File
100% (theoretical)	155	$65	52	$1
50%	75	$130	26	$2
25%	38.75	$260	13.5	$4
10%	15.5	$650	5.2	$10

 

As you can see - as bandwidth efficiency drops, your throughput drops and your costs for network capacity and to move a file rises proportionally. The marginal cost to move a 5GB file from Los Angeles to Seattle would only be $1 if you could achieve the theoretical maximum capacity of the network. However, with 50 ms of latency, the efficiency drops to 10% and your cost rises to $10 for that file. While, $10 is a dramatic improvement over the $200 it would take to ship that file as a video tape - you are still paying 10 times as much to ship that file and your monthly bandwidth costs are as much as 10 times what they could be.

Optimizing the WAN (to overcome TCP Limitations)

There are a number of methods to increase the efficiency and throughput of your network including data reduction and latency compensation.

Data reduction minimizes the amount of data that needs to be sent over the network. While the throughput of the network remains the same, it does improve the response time and effective throughput by achieving the desired results. Some types of data reduction include:

• Compression - by compressing the data set, you send less data through the pipe. The data is compressed on one end of the transmission and decompressed on the receiving end. The data that transverses the network is only a fraction of the original data.

• Caching - by accessing a locally stored copy of a file, that data does not have to transverse over the network

• Incremental Changes - only sends the changes made to a file - thus only a subset of the file is sent over the networks.

In each of these cases - the actual throughput is not increased and if a file is already compressed and has never been transmitted over that network segment, the data reduction methods are going to have no impact on your network throughput.

WAN acceleration techniques address the limitations of TCP by reducing the effects of Latency and Congestion enabling the throughput of a network link to approach its theoretical capacity. When your network throughput approaches 100% efficiency, the amount of data it can carry goes up dramatically and the costs to move files goes down at the same rate.

Measuring ROI

When calculating ROI, the Payback Period - the time to get your money back based on the initial investment is a very quick rule of thumb method. This is done by taking the initial Investment and dividing that number by the monthly savings. This method is outlined below:

• Investment

• Add all costs to implement a Content Distribution solution

• Software

• Hardware

• Implementation

• Marginal Cost Savings

• Cost of "Bandwidth" Recovered Per Location

• Number of Locations (per location)

• Add the Bandwidth "Recovered" Cost for Each Location = Marginal Cost Savings

• Payback Period

• Divide Investment by the Marginal Cost Savings to get the Payback Period

Case Study: International Syndication of Content - More Efficiency

A Los Angeles based content provider want to syndicate their content to 5 major international markets. Once the content has been moved to those international landing pads the content is transformed (transcode, language dubbing, and subtitling) for local consumption.

The current network connectivity is DS3 45 Mb/s and due to the distances, average throughput is only 2Mb/s. The throughput is only about 5% of the theoretical capacity and files are taking an extremely long time to move over the network. For example, the daily programming package is about 100GB and would take over 100 hours to transmit to each of the international landing pad. A 5 day delay to get daily programming distributed internationally will not meet the business needs of the company.

Link	Bandwidth (Mb/s)	Latency (ms)	Bandwidth Throughput (Mb/s)	With Signiant (Mb/s)
LA-Primary	250	Ave. 225	10	237
London	45	200	2.5	42.75
Berlin	45	220	2	42.75
Sydney	45	250	1.8	42.75
Melbourne	45	250	1.8	42.75
Singapore	45	250	1.8	42.75

 

Using Signiant, each of the network segments is able to achieve 95% throughput or 42.75 Mb/s. The file package that was taking 5 days to transport can now be moved in just 5 hours. Enabling the ability to deliver a complete days worth of programming internationally within 5 hours opens up those markets by allowing the content provider to get their programs to air quickly while the content is still fresh.

Fixed Investment:

Investment: Content Distribution Management	Cost
Hardware	$20,000
Software / Maintenance	$144,000
Implementation	$50,000
Total Fixed Investment	$214,000

 

Marginal Cost Savings:

Link	Bandwidth Throughput (Mb/s)	"Wasted" Bandwidth Cost / Month
Los Angeles	10	$14,367
London	2.5	$4,708
Berlin	2	$4,766
Sydney	1.8	$4,789
Melbourne	1.8	$4,789
Singapore	1.8	$4,789
	Total Monthly Marginal Cost Savings	$38,209

 

Payback Period and Cash Flow: 

Payback Period	Cost
Fixed Investment	$214,000
Marginal Cost Savings (Monthly)	$38,209
Payback Period	5.6

 

Case Study: International Syndication of Content - Reduce Monthly Bandwidth Expense

In addition to capturing the efficiency value - getting more out of what you spend in the previous - there is an option to spend less per month on your bandwidth expenses. In this case:

• The primary link is reduced from 250 Mb/s to each of the DS3 45 Mb/s

• Each of the remote links are reduced from DS 45 Mb/s to 10 Mb/s

• The results are that there is a $330,000 annual reduction in cash flow while increasing your network throughput by 500%

• The Payback period is just 5.7 Mons on this project

 

Link	Bandwidth (Mb/s)	Bandwidth Throughput (Mb/s)	Bandwidth Cost / Month	New Service with Signiant (Mb/s)	New Service with Signiant (Mb/s)2	Additional BW (Mb/s)	Improved BW (%)	Improved BW Value
LA-Primary	250	10	$15,000	45	$5,000	35	450%	$3,889
London	45	2.5	$5,000	10	$1,500	7.5	400%	$1,125
Berlin	45	2	$5,000	10	$1,500	8	500%	$1,200
Sydney	45	1.8	$5,000	10	$1,500	8.2	556%	$1,230
Melbourne	45	1.8	$5,000	10	$1,500	8.2	556%	$1,230
Singapore	45	1.8	$5,000	10	$1,500	8.2	556%	$1,230
		Current Bandwidth Cost	$40,000	New BW Cost	$12,500	Performace Improvement	500%	$9,904
			Monthly Bandwidth Savings Annual		$27,500 $330,000		Total Incremental Value	$37,404

 

Payback Period	Cost
Fixed Investment	$214,000
Marginal Cost Savings (Monthly)	$37, 404
Payback Period	5.7

 

Case Study: WAN Collaborative Production

A bi-coastal company with major facilities in California and New York collaborate on the production of content. The content is aired on their cable channel as well as syndicated to many outlets. They are doing production in HD and are under tight deadlines as the value of content is time sensitive. The main content archive is in New York and production is done in both locations. Finished content is typically distributed through the New York facility.

The network connectivity is an OC12 622 Mb/s and due to the distances, average throughput is only about 45 Mb/s. The throughput is only about 7% of the theoretical capacity and collaborative production is not possible when HD content from the archive needs to be accessed by multiple producers simultaneously in Los Angeles as well as sending finished content to New York for approval, playout, and distribution.

One example is a 90 minute HD program needs to air at 7:30pm in the Eastern time zone. Production cannot be completed until 3pm and needs to be transmitted back to New York for approval and then transmitted to the playout center. If the entire available 45 Mb/s link is consumed, without any issues, it would take over 2 hours for content to be transmitted from Los Angeles to New York. This would not able the content to be reviewed, approved, and then re-transmitted to the playout center.

Link	Bandwidth (Mb/s)	Latency (ms)	Bandwidth Throughput (Mb/s)	With Signiant (Mb/s)
LA	622	90	45	578
New York	622	90	45	578

 

Using Signiant, the throughout is 578 Mb/s or 93% bandwidth efficiency. This enables content to be sent "faster than real time" - the same file that was taking over 2 hours are now taking less than 25 minutes to send - allowing them to easily meet their deadlines. This also allows other departments and projects to use the network simultaneously.

Fixed Investment:

Investment: Content Distribution Management	Cost
Hardware	$15,000
Software / Maintenance	$60,000
Implementation	$12,000
Total Fixed Investment	$87,000

 

Marginal Cost Savings:

Link	Bandwidth Throughput (Mb/s)	"Wasted" Bandwidth Cost / Month
Los Angeles	45	$18,553
New York	45	$18,553
	Total Monthly Marginal Cost Savings	$37,106

 

Conclusions

Due to bandwidth efficiencies, your current WAN Infrastructure is not delivering the throughput that you are paying for. This means that it is not enabled to deliver large files over long distances and the timely delivery of content to meet your business needs.

Through the use of WAN Acceleration technology from Signiant, your efficiency can be increased dramatically, which will have a dramatic impact on your business, including:

• Faster Delivery Time

• Lower Overall and Labor Cost

• Immediate ROI - the longer you wait, the more money you waste.
  

 

DOWNLOAD a PDF of the above information.

VIEW the Video White Paper:

The ROI of WAN Bandwidth Optimization