Riverbed (News - Alert) Technology has licensed Vineyard’s Network Application Visibility Library (NAVL) deep packet inspection (DPI) engine, designed to provide Riverbed customers with a comprehensive application classification technology to protect critical applications while containing recreational applications.

The licensed technology helps identify all types of applications -- even hard to detect applications and custom applications -- to protect critical applications such as Web, voice, and video and contain recreational application traffic.

A powerful DPI engine that is delivered as a software developer kit (SDK), NAVL provides real-time, Layer-7 classification of all network application traffic. Company officials said that it has been designed for quick integration into network infrastructure platforms.

Developers of firewalls, unified threat management (UTM) and other network security and management solutions benefit from NAVL as it provides the application visibility. Company officials said that it enables developers to apply and enforce application admission, control and performance policies for their enterprise and service provider customers.

The integration of NAVL with Riverbed wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions is expected to increase the accuracy and efficiency of the real-time network traffic classification.

With Riverbed WAN Optimization solutions, customers’ business runs faster and efficiently, delivering consistent service levels and cutting the costs of their IT infrastructure.

Rob Quiros, vice president of product management at Riverbed, said that working closely with Vineyard continues to pay dividends as Riverbed is providing additional value to its global customer base. He said that this strategic relationship has been mutually beneficial.

“We continue to collaborate with Vineyard to deliver innovative solutions to enterprises leveraging the NAVL deep packet inspection technology,” Quiros said.

Jason Richards, president and CEO at Vineyard Networks, added that they look forward to continuing to work closely with Riverbed to deliver innovative performance solutions.

Earlier this month, Riverbed Technology introduced hardware appliance models and software enhancements to its Riverbed Steelhead product family.