WAN accelerator directly over the Internet - Advisable?

[PSI-INDY]

Hello all,

I've been trying to search online and the KB, but so far I can't find a clear answer: Is it considered unsafe to allow the source and destination WAN accelerators to communicate directly over the Internet on ports 6164/6165? Or is it necessary to route the traffic through an IPSEC tunnel? I ask because bandwidth across our SITE-TO-SITE tunnel to the target server is limited due to a Comcast issue. I can probably work around the issue by routing the traffic outside the tunnel. I understand that the traffic between WAN accelerators is encrypted, but I still don't want to do this if it significantly decreases security.

[foggy]

Generally, VPN is recommended, though, if encryption is enabled and firewalls are properly configured, you're good to go.

[PSI-INDY]

Thank you.

[Gostev]

I think it's a bad idea to not use VPN since control traffic will not be encrypted in this case.