Benefits of Application Acceleration The proliferation of new Web-enabled applications coupled with the trend of data center consolidation put great strain on Web application servers that need to cope with ever increasing transactions volume. A growing portion of these applications use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to secure and protect the privacy of sensitive information. Common examples are e-commerce shopping carts, e-banking, and more. However, servers are very inefficient in processing encrypted transactions. Processing encrypted transactions require a much higher allocation of CPU resources than does simple Web page serving. In some cases, performing SSL encryption/ decryption is 100 times more demanding than handling the same request as clear text. Performing these SSL calculations slow Web server performances, leading to inconsistent user experience, and even downtime. AppDirector’s application acceleration features relieve Web servers of performing CPU intensive SSL calculations by handling all the associated encryption, decryption, session and certificate management tasks. Unlike Web servers, AppDirector is optimized to perform SSL calculations, using dedicated ASIC-based hardware and software. Offloading these SSL calculations relieves Web server CPUs allowing it to serve the application in a greater efficiency.
