Network management questions around WAN optimization are answered in this article presented on Webopedia. Ideally, a WAN solution will allow you to prioritize traffic and guarantee a certain amount of available bandwidth for mission critical applications. A complete WAN optimization solution allows a business to block unwanted traffic, give priority to certain hosts, and provide lower latency and higher throughput for the most critical applications.
“One optimization technology, VPN tunneling or Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), is used to avoid packet delivery issues in shared WAN environments. This technology enables one network to send its data via another network’s connections. Tunneling works by encapsulating a network protocol within packets carried by the second network. This WAN optimization technique is important for any business that transmits business-critical data over a public network.”