NetEqualizer News Blog

Editor’s Note: As NetEqualizer’s popularity has grown, more and more users have been sharing their experiences on message boards and listservs across the Internet. Just to give you an idea of what they’re saying, here a few of the reviews and discussion excerpts that have been posted online over the past several months…

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Christopher Stave, Computing and Network Services, Drew University (from email to APconnections, Dec, 2011)

At Drew our NetEqualizer continues to work very well, so thanks for making an excellent product that just works and does what it says it will very well. It is usually one of the things I mention to people as a “best thing we’ve bought” type device, as it really is SO easy to use and configure and really does keep everything usable. Thanks for making an excellent product!

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Dan Spechtenhauser, Network Technician, Palo Verde College (comment, YouTube NetEq Online Demo, Oct 2011)
This truly is a set it and forget type appliance. I used another vendors product years ago and I was always in there working on it, finding heavy use users and products, and tweaking and geeking out on it. With Neteq, I have spent maybe 2 or less hours doing administrative task over the last 4 or more years.  I would spend 2 hours per day before noon most of the time when using the purple companies product. NETEQ ROCKS!

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Peter Spencer Deskspace.biz

In the UK there is an advertising slogan for paint that says:  ”It does exactly what it says on the tin”. Well the NetEqualizer does exactly what they claim on their website: we took it out of the box, plugged it in to our network, and 10 minutes later, all our bandwidth problems disappeared. No more dropped VoIP calls, and no more complaints about slow internet access or stuck emails. We did get a couple of unhappy users – but those were the folks who were downloading movies on peer-to-peer or running unauthorised web-servers on our network – and they had caused all the trouble for everyone! NetEqualizer was automatically throttling back their bandwidth usage. Easy. We have 100 tenants in our serviced office, and the internet just HAS to work 24/7 – NetEqualizer has made them, and us, happy!

George, unknown (Ubiquiti Forum, Nov 12th, 2010)
… We have the 45Mbit NetEqualizer model. Works simply awesome, just like black magic.

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Tim Buller, Bethel College (From email to APconnections, Nov, 2010)

… Thanks again for such a great, easy to use product.

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Tim Payne, Network Administrator, Macalester College, (From EDUCAUSE Network Management (NETMAN) Listserv, Mar, 2010)

… We just bought a new NetEQ unit here as well when we upgraded our internet pipe to 130Mbps.  It has worked perfectly for us, as did our old one….

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Nathan P. Hay, Network Engineer — Computer Services, Cedarville University, (From EDUCAUSE Network Management (NETMAN) Listserv, Mar, 2010)

… We have the NE3000-350 on a 150 Mbps pipe.  We bought it the same time we had a large increase in our pipe, so I am just recently starting to see the graphs plateau at 120 Mbps (80% of 150, the point where neteq kicks in).   It took our users a while to catch up to our larger pipe size, so I think the Neteq didn’t do anything for about a year because we never hit 80% usage.

So it is working well for us.  I barely touch it as far as management goes.

It lives up to the sales pitch for us and the price easily convinced us when we outgrew the PacketShaper we had.

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Vince Stoffer, Reed University (From Educause SECURITY list, Jan 19th-20th, 2010)

… We’ve had the NetEqualizer in place at Reed since the beginning of this year.  So far, so good.  It’s lived up to the promise of being a set it and forget it type of appliance.  It was replacing a Packetshaper and while we do miss the increased visibility into the traffic (including better monitoring and reporting) of the Packetshaper, the Netequalizer has been trouble-free at doing its job of equalizing traffic in a protocol-agnostic fashion.  It requires very time little beyond the initial setup and bit of fine tuning.  The unit will also allow us to continue upgrading our bandwidth without needing to upgrade the hardware (the reason our Packetshaper had to go). …

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Jason Lavoie, Bowdoin College (From EDUCAUSE Small College Constituent Group Listserv)

…Bowdoin was in a similar position this summer. We were happy with our Packetshapers, but were not able to renew the service/software contract on our pair of 9500′s. I believe the Bluecoat acquisition was to blame for them pushing out the slightly-old hardware. The “special” upgrade pricing was excessive, so we looked into alternatives. After some testing with on site demo units, we selected the NetEqualizer. We’ve been using them since mid-August, and have had no issues since the initial installation.

Years ago, I had made the determination that playing whack-a-mole with Packeteer DPI and chasing down the latest classification plugin or software upgrade was more operational overhead than the gains warranted. Our attempt at using Dynamic Partitions failed — the box couldn’t keep up with our bandwidth/session demands. We had been running our Packetshapers in a dumbed-down configuration that had High/Medium/Default/Low priority class trees. Administration time was relatively low, but we weren’t using much of the DPI functionality we were paying for. Netequalizer fits our needs almost perfectly for the right price.

The other major factor that led to the decision were how cooperative and helpful they were with pre-sales support. We were able to augment their standard option with optical interfaces for essentially the price of the cards. All of our questions were answered promptly and with technical understanding of the product. In pre-production testing, the few problems we ran into were quickly and thoroughly addressed whether they were our implementation problems or a NetEqualizer issue (there was one with an incorrect license key). …
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Dave Barker, Broadlinc Communications

I just wanted to let you guys at Netequalizer know how much I depend on my NE2000. I am a small ISP with about 360 customers and I would be lost without the Netequalizer. The people there are always very friendly and quick to respond. Keep up the great work.

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Kevin Kershner, CS&T Inc.

I admin several NetEqualizers in hospital and county couthouse networks and the clients love them.  They let employees have freedom from whitelists and yet keep data lines open for legit traffic, makes for happier employees.

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Damien McNabb, Ronaldcom.ca

We provide IT support and services for a large hotel and conference center here in Russell Manitoba. Since installing the NetEqualizer our Internet Congestion  during peak usage has disappeared. I was so impressed with the NetEqualizer that we are now  installing two more NetEqualizer units at  other  smaller resort properties here in town.

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Craig Mackay, Director, Mascon Cable Systems, AirSpeed Wireless Inc

We just returned from the cable operators convention here in Canada. We were surprised to learn that similar operators without the benefit on a NetEqualizer often needed as much as 250 megabits sustained bandwidth to keep 650 users running. We on the other hand run about 4000 on 60 megabits made possible by the unique abilities of our NetEqualizer to distribute out the load over time more efficiently. That translates to the NetEqualizer investment paying for itself many times over…

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Mike Ferguson, Chapman University

I’d also recommend you look at the NetEqualizer. We evaluated it this summer along with several other packet-shaping solutions. We also needed to upgrade our NetEnforcer to handle more than 100M for our ResHalls, but we weren’t impressed with its P2P classification. As a matter of fact, we haven’t had much success using L7 packet inspection of P2P traffic with other solutions: either using our Fortigate firewalls, the Packeteer box we used before, or the NetEnforcer we just retired. We don’t block P2P, but we do want to throttle it. You can be diligent about updating your policies from the manufacturer as soon as they’re released; however, we found a significant amout of P2P traffic still bypassed the filters right after an update because it wasn’t identified properly.

Our work-around with the NetEnforcer was to throttle the number of connections per second and limit the total amount of bandwidth per IP. But we always felt we were constraining our available resources, particularly by reducing bandwidth per IP, as we were limiting a person’s bandwidth to DSL/Cable-like levels just because of lack of L7 capabilities.

With the NetEqualizer, we’re still limiting the number of connections per second, but we’re using the “behavior” algorithms to dynamically adjust bandwidth per IP so all users are given a fair amount of bandwidth. But at the same time, we’re still able to throttle P2P traffic just as effectively without it affecting quality video streaming or anything else non-P2P related.

Last, the cost is 1/4th to 1/7th less than a comparable L7 solution. We were able to buy 2 NetEqualizer units and hook them to both our public core boxes for redundancy. The total price was astoundling less than any other solution we looked at, except one which didn’t meet our requirements. For the other solutions, the price you’re paying is to invest in their R&D efforts to classify L7 traffic accurately and manage it effectively. But our experience using the NetEqualizer for the last 2 months has been that it manages bandwidth just as well, if not better.

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In our case, we have just less than 2000 residents, but we also have wireless clients on the Academic side that go through the same NetEqualizer (NE3000). Our second unit is strictly for failover. I’ve seen up to 4500 active users, which at night we give 150M of bandwidth. Even at peak (100%) utilization of the allotted bandwidth, the NetEqualizer gives great results.

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Adam Forsythe, Luther College

You might want to look into a NetEqualizer.  We switched to one 2 summers ago and have been very happy with it.  Like you, I needed to upgrade our NetEnforcer because we were expanding our internet connection beyond what the NetEnforcer was licensed for.  I decided to look into what other options were available because I was coming to the conclusion that prioritizing traffic based on being able to classify it 100% accurately is only great as long as you can classify the traffic accurately 100% of the time.  Since we were finding that a lot of the encrypted P2P traffic looked like https to NetEqualizer, I was having a hard time keeping the P2P under control without having negative affects on https traffic to web pages.

NetEqualizer doesn’t prioritize traffic based on identifying traffic type, it takes a different approach.  It simply tries to make everyone share the internet connection fairly.  It does this by limiting the total number of simultaneous network connections that any one ip address can make, and by introducing small delays into the sessions of users that are deemed to be using more than their fair share of bandwidth.  This approach means that it took a little bit of work up front to figure out what settings would work best for our users, but after that it takes very little ongoing work to keep it running.  As a bonus it was much less expensive than any of the other options I considered.

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Steve Hess, Wheaton College

We don’t have a big gamer population but no complaints on our end. Our gaming complaints pretty much disappeared when I replaced our PacketShaper with a NetEqualizer last year. No classification = no classification headaches.

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Wade LeBeau, The Daily Journal Network Operations Manager

NetEqualizer is one of the most cost-effective management units on the market, and we found the unit easy to install—right out of the box. We made three setting changes to match our network using the web (browser) interface, connected the unit, and right away traffic shaping started, about 10minutes total setup time. The unit has two Ethernet ports…one port toward your user network, the other ports toward your broadband connection/server if applicable. A couple of simple clicks and you can see reporting live as it happens. In testing, we ran our unit for 30-days and saw our broadband reports stabilize and our users receiving the same slices of broadband access. With the NetEqualizer, there is no burden of extensive policies to manage….The NetEqualizer is a nice tool to add to any network of any size. Businesses can see how important the Internet is and how hungry users can be for information.

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DSL Reports, April 2009

The Netequalizer has resulted in dramatically improved service to our customers. Most of the time, our customers are seeing their full bandwidth. The only time they don’t see it now is when they’re downloading big files. And, when they don’t see full performance, its only for the brief period that the AP is approaching saturation. The available bandwidth is re-evaluated every 2 seconds, so the throttling periods are often brief.

Bottom line to this is that we can deliver significantly more data through the same AP. The customers hitting web pages, checking e-mail, etc. virtually always see full bandwidth, and the hogs don’t impact these customers. Even the hogs see better performance (although that wasn’t one of my priorities).

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Loyola University — Chicago

At Loyola University Chicago, we are on our 2nd iteration of the NetEqualizer. We used the product happily for a number of years when we had a T3. We upgraded our internet pipe to 100MB and after about 6 months we noticed 100% saturation and students complaining of slow internet for various applications. We knew then that we needed another NetEqualizer. Once we plugged the box in it started managing the bandwidth, our pipe has not been saturated since, and more importantly the complaints have ceased.

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Alan Leech, Orlean Invest West Africa Limited, January 24, 2009

Gentlemen

We purchased 3 of your devices last year and I have to say we are very impressed by them.

They have matched our requirement perfectly and allow us to provide fair usage to our clients whilst reducing our overall OPEX.

You can be sure we will be purchasing in the future.

Alan Leech

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Illinois Wesleyan Replaces Packeteer with NetEqualizer as Part of Bandwidth Upgrade, January 19, 2009

By tshort

Network Services has completed the Network Upgrade Project.  The Internet bandwidth available to the Campus was doubled from 45MBs (DS3) to 90MBs in December.  Along with the additional bandwidth, a new bandwidth sharing device call a NetEqualizer replaced the existing Packeteer.  The NetEqualizer uses bandwidth sharing fairness rules based on network usage to share bandwidth and balance the available bandwidth between all users.  The project made a dramatic improvement to Internet access for the campus community.

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Chris Chamberlain, Oakland University in Detroit

Doug,

Because Netequalizer simply makes things fair, i.e. gives everyone on the link the same percentage of the bandwidth “pie” the netequalizer can handle any type of traffic, because it isn’t classifying anything.

Chris Chamberlain

Oakland University

>On Apr 30, 2008, at 4:42 PM, Green, Doug wrote:

>We are considering Netequalizer. They are claiming to be able to manage  encrypted BitTorrent. Can anyone verify this?

>Thank you,

>Doug Green

>Manager, Network Services & Security

>University of New Hampshire

>50 College Rd

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Charlie Prothero, CIO, Keystone College

I have written on a couple of Educause lists about our experience with the Netequalizer, which has been invariably positive.  It’s a snap to set up and doesn’t require anywhere near the tuning effort that a Packeteer does.  For general Internet circuit coverage, I’m very pleased with it.

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Ben Schworm, The Independent School Educators’ List, ISED-L

We just re-evaluated our systems after realizing that even with the Packetshaper in place, we’d need to increase the amount of bandwidth that we offer the community. First of all, the new Packetshaper hardware we’d need was going to cost $18,000. Second, over the 5 years that we’ve had the Packetshaper, we’ve seen its effectiveness decrease with the increased availability and academic usage of real-time streaming apps and the increasing amount of traffic that is classified as either pure web browsing traffic (whether it is or not) or “default”, the traffic class that catches all the other traffic that the Packetshaper can’t specifically identify. Furthermore, the Packetshaper can tend to be a pretty admin-intensive system to keep working effectively.

The NetEqualizer really only deals with end-user behavior in that it looks at the bandwidth that a given user is trying to utilize relative to what’s available and throttles “bad” users in order to try to maintain fair access to the bandwidth. It also throttles “bad” applications like P2P that open many connections to and from a given user. The box is nearly configuration and maintenance-free and costs a fraction of what the Packetshaper does.

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Ed Loebach, UVMRESNET

I was asked to tell our experience with NetEqualizer. We purchased the box about 3 weeks into first semester when our old bandwidth control server died and support was not forthcoming from the company.

We put NetEqualizer in place and fired it up with little to no problem. For the first 5-6 hours it worked as we were told it would with NO configuration. After the first day we noticed problems with students exceeding the connection limits we set. We called the company and within 24 hours we had the configuration modified to the specific needs of our network and our bandwidth was under our control again.

In the last 4 months I have not had to make any additional changes to the configuration. In fact we have not even had the need to restart the box. The NetEqualizer box has some very good algorithms to have controlled our heavy bandwidth users with not adding significant network overhead to the rest of our low bandwidth users. Our students have seen an increase in bandwidth when they need it. The gamers are happy because the latency we used to have under our old bandwidth system has disappeared.

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Douglas Hedges, EDUCAUSE Small College Constituent Group Listserv

We’ve dumped our Packeteer device about 18 mos. ago for a NetEqualizer. It has worked as advertised and has required virtually no maintenance after initial setup (which took just a few minutes as well). There are some good technical papers on their site (http://www.netequalizer.com) describing its operation and comparing it to other products. I believe they’re worth a read if you want to see if it’s a good fit for your campus. It sure was for ours.

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Russ Leathe, EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv

Gordon College switched from Packeteer to netEQ a while ago. It works flawlessly and our daily management of bandwidth decreased significantly.

They also have a CALEA probe.

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Superdog, DSLReports.com

When you plug in the Neteq box, it doesn’t care about IP’s or what range it is on. You set the bandwidth maximum limit for whatever your pipe size is and then plug it inline between your core router and your first main switch and you are done…

…I love this unit and I can not say enough about it. With M0n0wall and Packetteer, you have to manually setup all of the rules in order for the units to be effective. After you spend a few hours getting them setup, it only takes the user/program 10 seconds to switch ports on you and that rule is then invalid and you need to go back and redo it.

This type of setup requires you to monitor your box constantly, creating even more work. The Neteq unit doesn’t need to know all of this. It just counts connections per user (A limit you set) and the amount of bandwidth each user consumes. If the bandwidth is there and no one else is using it, that person gets it. If they are running Limewire at full throttle and another user logs in and starts to surf the net?, that user gets full priority and their pages will load quickly while the Limewire download has delay added to their packets.

IMHO, using this unit is a no-brainer for any ISP. It is a hands off setup that really works.

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Josh Heller, Sr. Network Analyst — Information Technology, Kutztown University

Our University started with PacketShapers, but also made an investment in NetEqualizer when we found the PacketShaper wasn’t completely doing the job. Today we use both products.

We have been pleased with NetEqualizer  as it does what it advertises – it makes a noticeable difference in congested network.

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Nathan P. Hay, Network Engineer — Computer Services, Cedarville University

We switched from PacketShaper to NetEqualizer this summer.  NetEq is much simpler to manage and much cheaper.

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George Flowers, Flint River Tech

We currently have the NE2000, and it works great!  No other product can do what the NetEqualizer does at a great price!

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Constantinos Tsakonas, General Manager, Twin Island Communications

I would like to order another NETEQ-POE. I have 2 of these units segmenting my wireless network and they work like a dream!

NetEqualizer has also received mention as an HEOA role model

Created by APconnections, the NetEqualizer is a plug-and-play bandwidth control and WAN/Internet optimization appliance that is flexible and scalable. When the network is congested, NetEqualizer’s unique “behavior shaping” technology dynamically and automatically gives priority to latency sensitive applications, such as VoIP and email. Click here for a full price list.