Tacit Networks Tacit Networks I-shared 1.6.1 is a low maintenance storage appliance that speeds WAN file sharing connections enough to provide return on investment (ROI). Rated excellent, I-shared 1.6.1 will extensively improve productivity. Remote offices, instead of waiting disproportionately longer to share files over a WAN (because of limited bandwidth and high latency of the connection, as well as 'chattiness' of such file sharing protocols as NFS and CIFS), can run a new Windows-based I-shared 1.6.1 appliance to emulate WAN conditions by changing only two configuration values: Delay_Shaper for setting latency and Bandwidth_Shaper for setting connection speed. A Linux version is also available. During testing, users found remote file sharing to be fast and straightforward, while keeping maintenance reasonable. During testing, the I-shared 1.6.1 Server box acted as a server cache on the central office side, and on the remote side, a box ran on an IBM xServer. Both machines ran Microsoft NAS software for Windows 2000, but the soon-to-be-available version of I-shared 1.6.1 should support Windows Storage Server 2003 also. During testing with a latency of 80ms and full T1 speed, the performance of a simulated WAN was incrementally reduced. At T1 speed, the difference in file access time between two laptops set up as clients was considerable. One laptop was not going through the Tacit appliance and required 90 seconds to open an Excel file, and the other, which was set up to use the I-shared 1.6.1 appliance, opened the file in 3 seconds. Significant improvements were also noted for file copying between shared directories and local laptop drives.