Social media platforms like Facebook can slam brakes on a wide area network (WAN), which is meant to transport business data. In a large enterprise where computer users may be scattered over many buildings, branches or cities, the WAN connects these, making it possible for users to access e-mail and other business applications.

“As more bandwidth becomes available, we now have situations where if we make things go faster over the WAN, we make Facebook, YouTube and games go faster too. That’s not what IT managers want,” says Brandon Rochat, territory sales manager for South and Sub-Saharan Africa at Exinda, a WAN optimisation technology vendor.