Blue Coat controls WAN videos

Blue Coat Systems has released a new application classification plug-in for its Blue Coat PacketShaper appliance. The new plug-in identifies and controls traffic from popular Japanese video sharing Websites, Nico Nico Douga from Niwango. and acTVila. Blue Coat gained the PacketShaper appliance from its acquisition of Packeteer in June 2008.

Employees watching videos from these and other video sources such as YouTube and news sites can cause a company's Internet gateway or branch office Wide Area Network (WAN) links to become overwhelmed and disrupt the performance of business-critical applications and communications. PacketShaper appliances can now identify traffic from these specific applications and apply policy to stop, restrict or optimize the traffic.

Blue Coat appliances provide visibility and control over network traffic to improve application monitoring and performance for any user, anywhere, across the networks of distributed enterprises. PacketShaper appliances work in conjunction with Blue Coat ProxySG appliances for WAN optimization and for Internet gateway control, optimization and acceleration.

PacketShaper appliances can currently identify and classify over 600 discrete applications, while providing the optimisation needed to ensure the effectiveness of business applications and the proper utilization of network resources.