Solicitors see network performance increase with WAN optimisation

Hempsons Solicitors, the UK's largest specialist health and social care legal practice, has seen network response times increase by 200 per cent at peak periods, thanks to a new WAN optimisation solution from provider Exinda.

Brett Raymond, IT director at Hempsons, said that network performance, specifically data replication, had improved by around 70 per cent overall.

Hempsons initiated the project because the firm's 270 Citrix users working at remote sites were experiencing poor network performance, especially when they needed to use printing services.

The packet-shaping technology initially in place was not up to the job, according to Raymond.

"We were using an outdated packet shaper, and users were complaining about response times. Our consultancy, NETprotocol, recommended that we try the Exinda solution."

Hempsons first trialled the solution just for its traffic-shaping abilities, but then moved on to other uses.

"We put a trial unit in and saw great results, purely just for traffic-shaping. It was easy to use and ticked all our boxes.

"Later we started using it for data replication - that's when we saw the 70 per cent decrease in data going across the LAN. That saved us investing in new infrastructure."

The system also enables network monitoring, which allowed Raymond to get a view of what traffic was hogging his network bandwidth. He was then able to establish rules to prioritise the most important traffic.

"We were able to look at the data going across the WAN, and we could tweak the bandwidth as we saw fit. We gave Citrix traffic the lion's share of bandwidth and then printing."

Raymond stated that his users saw immediate results, and no longer experience poor network response times.

"Our Citrix users now enjoy excellent application delivery performance. We have achieved this without having to spend more money additional bandwidth."