Amid rumors of a big software licensing deal in the works, Radware Ltd. ( RDWR - Snapshot Report ) became one of the top-performing Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks on Wednesday with a gain of 6.8%. Volume was over 930,000 today, compared to the daily average of around 183,000.

According to Oppenheimer & Co., the company, which is a global leader of application delivery and application security solutions for virtual and cloud data centers, is in “advanced negotiations” with Juniper Networks (JNPR) for a possibly “substantial” deal.

While this speculation was apparently the reason for the share price bump today, it has nothing to do with the company’s Zacks #1 Rank, which is based on earnings estimate revisions and was established well before the announcement.

There’s only one estimate on RDWR for 2012 and 2013, but it has moved higher in the past 30 days. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2012 is up nearly 9.3% in that time to $1.53 per share. For 2013, the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased 9.1% to $1.79, which suggests year-over-year profit growth of practically 17%.

The reason behind the higher consensus was a solid first-quarter report announced on May 1, in which earnings per share topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate by almost 14%. Meanwhile, revenue jumped 17% year over year to $45 million from $38.6 million. The company attributed this performance to increased demand in the Americas.

RDWR has either beaten or matched the Zacks Consensus Estimate for eight consecutive quarters now. As the graph below shows, it has beaten six times and matched twice in this run, and has now put together three straight quarters of positive surprises.

Radware Ltd. Develops, manufactures and markets products that manage and direct Internet traffic among network resources to enable continuous access to Web sites and other services, applications and content based on Internet protocol. It offers a broad range of Internet traffic management solutions to service providers, e-commerce businesses and corporate enterprises that require uninterrupted availability and optimal performance of IP-based applications that are critical to their business.