SOA and Web services place unprecedented demands on networks to be more intelligent and proactive than ever before – in other words, to become a service oriented network (SON). Not long ago, of course, the network filled the role of simply transporting application requests from one endpoint to another. Most network devices were set to automatically direct traffic over various ports from outside the network to internal applications. Load balancers – the network technology most relevant to application architects and developers -- were installed, set up for basic “round robin” load balancing, and never touched again.
As with application technology, network technology has come a long way in terms of intelligence. And as network devices have become more intelligent, they’ve been able to work hand-in-hand with applications by offloading needs such as SSL-acceleration, application persistence, caching, compression, and more. The most advanced of these network products even offer bi-directional proxy capabilities that provide control over application flows and enable the applications and the network to work in concert.
