Troubleshooting guide

CHAPTER

1-1

Cisco Wide Area Application Services Configuration Guide

OL-26579-01

Planning Your WAAS Network

This chapter describes general guidelines, restrictions, and limitations that you should be aware of before

you set up your Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) network.

Note Throughout this chapter, the term WAAS device is used to refer collectively to the WAAS Central

Managers and WAEs in your network. The term WAE refers to WAE and WAVE appliances, WAE

Network Modules (the NME-WAE family of devices), and SM-SRE modules running WAAS, and

vWAAS instances.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• Checklist for Planning Your WAAS Network, page 1-1

• Site and Network Planning, page 1-4

• About Autoregistration and WAEs, page 1-8

• Identifying and Resolving Interoperability Issues, page 1-10

• WAAS Devices and Device Mode, page 1-15

• Calculating the Number of WAAS Devices Needed, page 1-18

• Supported Methods of Traffic Redirection, page 1-19

• Access Lists on Routers and WAEs, page 1-25

• WAAS Login Authentication and Authorization, page 1-26

• Logically Grouping Your WAEs, page 1-27

• Data Migration Process, page 1-28

Checklist for Planning Your WAAS Network

Cisco Wide Area Application Engines (WAEs) that are running the WAAS software can be used by

enterprises or service providers to optimize the application traffic flows between their branch offices and

data centers. You deploy WAE nodes at the WAN endpoints near the networked application clients and

their servers, where they intercept WAN-bounded application traffic and optimize it. You must insert

WAE nodes into the network flow at defined processing points.

WAAS software supports the following three typical network topologies:

• Hub and spoke deployments—In a hub and spoke deployment servers are centralized and branch

offices host clients and a few local services only (for example, WAAS printing services).