One of the major concern most of the companies now facing is branch office connectivity speed. More and more applications are accessed from branch offices. Applications are centrally deployed. Branch offices may be connected with higher bandwidth link, but still the application delivery will be slow. User raises the complaint upgrade the link again; add wan acceleration devices etc… How to handle such situations.

There is a formulated approach required to tackle this issue. Couple of data we have to collect and do the analysis. I can describe you one of the practical methodology here:-

1. Collect the number of users in each branch.
2. Collect details of applications you want to deliver to branches.
3. Collect the bandwidth requirement of each application.
4. Information of the application design / delivery. E.g. Application published over Citrix, Application accessed through Java, Web applications, File Share etc.
5. Collect the time taking to complete a transaction / access application over present connection. Tabulate bandwidth with type of connection (type of VPN).
6. Information of bandwidth usage with protocol / type of application both HO and BO.
7. Time of the connection congestion. Morning / evening, more users access / do big transaction.

Once we tabulate the data we can do analysis and build the productive branch connectivity.
a) One of the reasons we will find branch office users will be consuming more bandwidth for internet browsing. That slows down your business application delivery. Need to add control on top of internet.
b) WAN acceleration / optimisation devices will not work on top of some applications / mode of delivery.
c) Type of VPN connection established to branch PPTP / L2TP / IPSec / SSL / Site to Site.