David: AJAX seems to be a technology that reduces the load on the server and speeds up responsiveness to the client. Is there any other way that client responsiveness can be made faster?

Keith: On the contrary, AJAX can actually increase the burden on the Web servers and networks in several ways. First, with the interactive nature of these new applications, the clients are constantly "polling" the systems for data.

This polling paradigm causes TCP sessions to constantly be created and then terminated, causing increased network traffic and burden on the servers to manage all of these connections. As the use of AJAX increases the amount of XML data to be used, the servers are then burdened with schema validation and routing decisions based upon the data. The impact on the network is substantial as more XML data consumes more bandwidth.

The Stampede Web 2.0 Performance Series solves these problems by mitigating the effect AJAX and XML have on the network, as well as reducing the burden on Web servers by offloading many of the network related functions, as well as applying specialized hardware to the tasks of processing the XML data.

David: XML is an interesting interop technology. But it seems like XML streams could move large chunks of ASCII around, especially if there's an XML-ized graphic or binary item. Can this transmission be optimized in any way?

Keith: Absolutely, and that is a key feature of the Stampede Web 2.0 Performance Series. Stampede's technology has been enhanced to be XML-aware, and we now apply our compression, caching and TurboStreaming technologies to the XML data. In addition, the Stampede Web 2.0 Performance Series appliances are configurable with hardware assist to validate, route and protect the enterprise against malicious XML threats.

David: If you're optimizing XML transmissions, aren't you breaking the XML format and fundamentally ignoring the interop benefits of XML.

Keith: Not at all. The optimization is done transparently between the client and the Stampede Web 2.0 Performance Series appliance during the transfer of the information across the network. Applications or services on either side will always see the complete XML request.

David: Can you describe Stampede's new acceleration technology?

Keith: The Stampede Web 2.0 Performance Series is Stampede's next generation of acceleration that is based on over a decade of experience accelerating information throughout the world's largest enterprises. Our unique approach to acceleration combines a hardware appliance at the data center with client software technology at the end-user device.

This two-sided approach enables the ultimate in bi-directional acceleration. Bi-directional compression that enables data to be compressed both from the server to the client and the client to the server. Cache differencing maintains a coherent copy of the browser's cache at both the client and server and only transmits the actual changes in data. TurboStreaming enables Stampede to transmit even compressed or encrypted objects up to 5 times faster. And, termination of SSL Sessions at the client enables acceleration of SSL applications in a secure manner.