High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is technology that optimizes the performance of TCP-based applications operating in a Wide Area Network (WAN) environment while preserving and strengthening branch security. WAAS combines WAN optimization, optimization of the Transport Control Protocol (TCP), Data Redundancy Elimination (DRE, also known as deduplication) and application protocol acceleration in a single a network-attached appliance or router-integrated module form factor.