Unlike other vendors that optimize TCP by using large windows or substituting other protocols, Riverbed improves the behavior of TCP while also reducing WAN traffic and optimizing application-protocol behavior.

Optimizing TCP behavior can be helpful in filling the pipe when a customer has a Long Fat Network (LFN). However, when the application being used is dependent on its own chatty protocol riding over TCP, then optimizing TCP alone is not enough to improve the behavior of the application.

Furthermore, some TCP optimization products are designed only for LFNs. They essentially saturate the pipe at the expense of all other traffic. Since they typically have little or no compression built in, there is no advantage gained when sending redundant traffic – it just gets sent again.