[c-nsp] WAN Accelerator deployment in a SP network

[Bruce Horth]

Hi,

I am a college student working with a medium-size network service
provider in southern Ontario, Canada to determine the feasibility in
offering WAN Acceleration as a managed service as a final graduation
project. I am hoping that people on this list may have some experience
using these products both in an enterprise environment and
specifically in a SP network. If anyone can shed some light on the
following questions, I would really appreciate it:

1) Is anyone currently using WAN acceleration products from companies
like Riverbed, Cisco, Juniper or Blue Coat (Packeteer)?

2) If you have deployed WAN acceleration, what were the main business
reasons driving the decision to go with WAN acceleration?

3) Which products have you been most/least happy with?

4) Have you encountered any serious network outages directly
attributable to a WAN acceleration appliance? Are some products
more/less reliable than others?

5) Does any telco/ISP/network company offer WAN acceleration as a
managed service and if so, what are some of the issues that you have
dealt with (either as a customer or a provider)?

I am looking for any and all feedback from people with experience in
this relatively new area of networking.

Thanks

--
BH