Steelhead Appliance Installation and Configuration Guide
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CHAPTER 1
Overview of the Steelhead Appliance
This chapter provides an overview of common terms, new features, upgrade instructions, technical and
environmental specifications, and a description of the status lights for the system. This chapter includes the
following sections:
“Overview of the Steelhead Appliance,”
“New Features in Version 5.5” on page 18
“Upgrading RiOS to Version 5.5.4” on page 20
“Downgrading the Software” on page 22
“Technical Specifications” on page 22
“Environmental Specifications” on page 27
“Series xx50 Status Lights and Ports” on page 29
“Series xx00 and xx10 Status Lights and Ports” on page 33
“Series xx20 Rev-A and Rev-B Status Lights and Ports” on page 35
“Bypass Card Status Lights” on page 39
Overview of the Steelhead Appliance
The causes for slow throughput in WANs are well known: high delay (round-trip time or latency), limited
bandwidth, and chatty application protocols. Large enterprises spend a significant portion of their
information technology budgets on storage and networks, much of it spent to compensate for slow
throughput by deploying redundant servers and storage, and the required backup equipment. Steelhead
appliances enable you to consolidate and centralize key IT resources to save money, reduce capital
expenditures, simplify key business processes, and improve productivity.
With the Steelhead appliance, you can solve a range of problems affecting WANs and application
performance, including:
Insufficient WAN bandwidth
Inefficient transport protocols in high-latency environments
Inefficient application protocols in high-latency environments
