Working over a WAN - Riverbed, Availl, others?

[Neil Osher]

So are there any users out there on currently on "highspeed" WANs?

Riverbed was mentioned to me by our Autodesk reseller. We are getting a "mobility" solution installed hopefully in the next week or two to try out for a month, however, they are very expensive.

I came across a company called Availl from perusing these Revit groups. I have a call in, waiting to hear back from a sales rep.

I know, (by reading through postings here), that Riverbed is becoming more accepted by Revit users. Is that still true? Any pitfalls? Has anyone tried the Availl system? Any other products out there?

We have 2 users, one in Park City and one in Pittsburgh. Both need to connect to our server in Denver while working in Revit. Remote Desktop seems like the cheapest solution right now. Just would have to buy 2 dedicated workstations and hide them somewhere.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

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Neil Osher

"Remember: Warm beer is infinitely colder than no beer." ~Warren Miller

[pdavis]

We are using Riverbeds in our offices and we recently added Steelhead Model client for our remore or mobile users, which I am. It has made a huge difference. Save to Centrals in the hotel that were taking an hour are down to well under 10 minutes.

[Neil Osher]

How many people do you have working on the hotel project? Are you the only one remotely working on that project (all the others working on it are in-house)?

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Neil Osher

"Remember: Warm beer is infinitely colder than no beer." ~Warren Miller

[sfaust]

avail looks promising, but for now (at least last I heard) they were not able to use the system with Revit's central file/worksharing system. They did say they were working with the autodesk developers to get it working, though, so maybe they have by now, I'm not sure.

[pdavis]

How many people do you have working on the hotel project? Are you the only one remotely working on that project (all the others working on it are in-house)?

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Neil Osher

"Remember: Warm beer is infinitely colder than no beer." ~Warren Miller

Sorry about the confusion. What I meant was, when I am working in a hotel room, connecting to the office servers via VPN, having the Steelhead mobile software made a workd of a difference.

We ran benchmarks on the Steelhead Riverbed appliances before and after they were installed in the offices and that made a significant performance improvement for users that our working on projects that are not stored on their local office servers.

[H.Hunter]

Our company has been using Availl for many years now. It is a great product if you implement it correctly. Before we upgraded our WAN, we had Frame-Relay (exciting!) and we had installed Riverbed devices on the network in concert with Availl software at two locations to test it out. DO NOT DO THIS! The replication systyem in the Availl software goes haywire and creates all kinds of phantom files and problems with AutoCAD drawings, especially xrefs. We had to can the Riverbeds after me and one of our IT guys spent a month doing R&D on the system. Otherwise, I can tell the Riverbeds are great products as well, but too much of a good thing (file transferance) can be a bad thing.

[Neil Osher]

avail looks promising, but for now (at least last I heard) they were not able to use the system with Revit's central file/worksharing system. They did say they were working with the autodesk developers to get it working, though, so maybe they have by now, I'm not sure.

Yes. I just got off the phone with one of the sales reps at Availl and she confirmed this. They are indeed working with Autodesk, but don't have a solution yet.

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Neil Osher

"Remember: Warm beer is infinitely colder than no beer." ~Warren Miller

[H.Hunter]

Yes. I just got off the phone with one of the sales reps at Availl and she confirmed this. They are indeed working with Autodesk, but don't have a solution yet.
It's nice to see they are. To my current knowledge the software doesn't play well with XML files (ToolPalettes, Sheet Sets). But that of course is ACAD related and not Revit. (Hence why I opened that topic up under Standards in leiu of platform.)

[Neil Osher]

Sorry about the confusion. What I meant was, when I am working in a hotel room, connecting to the office servers via VPN, having the Steelhead mobile software made a workd of a difference.

We ran benchmarks on the Steelhead Riverbed appliances before and after they were installed in the offices and that made a significant performance improvement for users that our working on projects that are not stored on their local office servers.


What would you say is an average Revit file size on one of your projects? A majority, (but not limited too), of our work is high-end custom residential single family. Our file sizes range from 30-50MB. (I could probably get that number down lower with better family management). I'm only curious as to what kind of file sizes you are dealing with over the Riverbed.

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Neil Osher

"Remember: Warm beer is infinitely colder than no beer." ~Warren Miller

[pdavis]

Off hand our project are between 50-100MB.

We also have all of our content on a single server and that content library is mapped (not actually sure of the Riverbed term), so all users, regardless of the office pull from the same library. Those folders get refreshed or something so that the Riverbeds in the other offices get the new files or changes.

Little off topic, but I have noticed only one problem with this approach and that is when we use a Family manager for users to search. depending on the keywords put into the search field, it can be faster to just go to the mapped network folder and look for the file manually, depending on when the Riverbed was "refreshed".