Distance is the key difference between disaster preparedness and mere high-availability systems. Unfortunately, with distance comes latency, and latency can really kill the performance of TCP/IP applications. Add in even a tiny bit of data loss, say one in a million packets, and TCP/IP scales back its data-transfer window, dropping the effective data-transfer rate of your cross-country T-3 line to as little as 10 Mbps. NetEx's HyperIP appliances can boost link utilization for common replication applications to 90% by replacing TCP across the WAN link with a protocol that can have more data in flight across the net between acknowledgments.HyperIP has been tested and certified to speed bulk data transfers and replication. HyperIP has been qualified with EMC's SRDF, HDS' TrueCopy, and NetApp's SnapMirror. One hardware model handles data transmission rates up to 800 Mbps with software license keys that enable the amount of bandwidth you purchase.

NetEx has long offered no-charge, 10-day upgrade keys so you can sync data back after a disaster.

In our briefing a few weeks ago I asked why they didn't offer a similar license for the initial data synchronization. According to a press release I got just before Storage Networking World, they do. I couldn't get them to call it the Marks Option, though.

Even worse, I couldn't get them to give me stock options. Oh, well.