Geo-replication systems improve the distribution of data across geographically distributed data networks. This enables improved end-user experience of data heavy applications such as web portal

Web portal

A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....

s. Geo-replication can be achieved using software, hardware or a combination of the two.

Geo-replication software

Geo-replication software is a network performance

Network performance

Network performance refers to the service quality of a telecommunications product as seen by the customer. It should not be seen merely as an attempt to get "more through" the network....

-enhancing technology that is designed to provide improved access to portal or intranet

Intranet

An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...

 content for uses at the most remote parts of large organizations. It is based on the principle of storing complete replicas of portal content on local servers, and then keeping the content on those servers up-to-date using heavily compressed data updates.

Portal acceleration

Geo-replication technologies are used to provide replication of the content of portals, intranets, web applications, content and data between servers, across wide area networks WAN

Wide area network

A wide area network is a telecommunication network that covers a broad area . Business and government entities utilize WANs to relay data among employees, clients, buyers, and suppliers from various geographical locations...

 to allow users at remote sites to access central content at LAN

Local area network

A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...

 speeds.

Geo-replication software can dramatically increase the performance of data networks that suffer limited bandwidth

Bandwidth (computing)

In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...

, latency

Latency (engineering)

Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in a system, the precise definition of which depends on the system and the time being measured. Latencies may have different meaning in different contexts.-Packet-switched networks:...

 and periodic disconnection. Terabyte

Terabyte

The terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes...

s of data can be efficiently replicated over a WAN giving remote sites rapid access to web applications.

Geo-replication software solutions use a combination of data compression

Data compression

In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....

 and content caching

Cache

In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...

 technologies. differencing

Delta encoding

Delta encoding is a way of storing or transmitting data in the form of differences between sequential data rather than complete files; more generally this is known as data differencing...

 technologies can also be employed to dramatically reduce the volume of data that has to be transmitted to keep portal content accurate across all servers. This update compression dramatically reduces the load that portal traffic inflicts on networks, and significantly improves the end user experience of a portal by accelerating its performance.

Portal replication

Remote users of web portals and collaboration environments will frequently experience network bandwidth and latency problems which will slow down their experience of opening and closing files, and otherwise interacting with the portal. Geo-replication technology is deployed to accelerate the remote end user portal performance to be equivalent to that experienced by users locally accessing the portal in the central office.

Differencing engine technologies

To deliver this reduction in the size of the required data updates across a portal, geo-replication systems often use differencing engine technologies. These systems are able to difference the content of each portal server right down to the byte level. This knowledge of the content that is already on each server enables the system to rebuild any changes to the content on one server, across each of the other servers in the deployment from content already hosted on those other servers. This type of differencing system ensures that no content, at the byte level, is ever sent to a server twice.

Offline portal replication on laptops

Geo-replication systems are often extended to deliver local replication beyond the server and down to the laptop used by a single user. Server to laptop replication enables mobile users to have access to a full replica of their business portal on a standard laptop. This technology may be employed to provide in the field access to portal content by, for example, sales forces and combat forces.

Geo-replication systems

• Infonic
  Infonic
  Infonic is a UK-based company which develops text analysis and SharePoint replication software.- History :Infonic was founded in January 2000 as Corpora ltd. At that time the company was wholly focused on developing and bringing to market text analytics technology. In April 2004, Corpora acquired...
  
  
• Syntergy
• Colligo Contributor
  Colligo Contributor
  Colligo Contributor is an award-winning proprietary software package aimed at businesses, developed by Colligo Networks of Vancouver, British Columbia. Colligo Contributor was launched in 2006 and is part of a family of Colligo products that provide rich client interfaces for Microsoft SharePoint,...