Out of the Box Ideas on How to Speed up your Internet Connection Revisited

April 16, 2013 — netequalizer

Editors Note: Sometimes speeding up your Internet is a matter of thinking out-of-the-box. Below we have revised and updated our 10 most popular ideas to accomplish this feat.

1) Make sure you are not accidentally connected to a weak access point signal

There are several ways an access point can slow down your connection a bit.  If the signal between you and the access point is weak, the access point will automatically downgrade its service to a slower speed. This happens to me all the time. My access point goes on the blink (needs to be re-booted) and my computer connects to the neighbor’s with a weaker signal. The speed of my connection on the weaker signaled AP is quite variable.  So, if you are on wireless in a densely populated area, check to make sure what signal you are connected  to.

Note: Most modern Wifi Controllers will actually push your Laptop toward the best signal available.  However many legacy wireless networks deploy older technology, especially in Hotels

2) Time of day does make a difference

During peak internet Usage times, 5 PM to Midnight local time, your upstream provider is also most likely congested.  If you have a bandwidth intensive task to do, such as downloading an update for your iPAD, you can likely get a much faster download by doing your download earlier in the day. I have even noticed that the more obscure YouTube’s and videos,  have problems running at peak traffic times. My upstream provider does a good job with Netflix and popular videos during peak hours ( these can be found in their cache), but if I get something that is not likely stored in a local copy on their servers the video will lag during peak times. ( see our article on caching)

3) Requesting “text-only” from your browser

If you are stuck with a dial-up or slower broadband connection, your  browser likely has an  option to load text-only. If you are a power user that’s gaming or watching YouTube, text-only will obviously have no effect on these activities, but it will speed up general browsing and e-mail.  Most web pages are loaded with graphics which take up the bulk of the load time, so switching to text-only will eliminate the graphics and save you quite a bit of time.

4) Install a fairness device to make sure no single connection dominates your bandwidth this is especially effective at ensuring your home VOIP service works without interruption.

Everything you do on the Internet creates a connection from inside your network to the Internet, and all of these connections compete for the limited amount of bandwidth your ISP provides.

Your router (cable modem) connection to the Internet provides first come/first serve service to all the applications trying to access the Internet. To make matters worse, the heavier users, the ones with the larger persistent downloads, tend to get more than their fair share of router cycles.  Large downloads are like the school yard bully, they tend to butt in line, and not play fair.

By inserting a device that dynamically reduce the large file downloads and high intensity videos,  you can provide preferential treatment to VOIP , Chat and email. Although your connection will not be faster it will appear faster when using these services.

Read the full article.

5) Turn off the other computers in the house

Many times, even during the day when the kids are off to school, I’ll be using my Skype phone and the connection will break up.  I have no idea what exactly the kids’ computers are doing, but if I log them off the Internet, things get better with the Skype call every time. In a sense, it’s a competition for limited bandwidth resources, so, decreasing the competition will usually boost your computer’s performance.

6) Kill background tasks on your computer

You should also try to turn off any BitTorrent or background tasks on your computer if you are having trouble while trying to watch a video or make a VoIP call.  Use your task bar to see what applications are running and kill the ones you don’t want.  Although this is a bit drastic, you may just find that it makes a difference. You’d be surprised what’s running on your computer without you even knowing it (or wanting it).

For you gamers out there, this also means turning off the audio component on your games if you do not need it for collaboration.

7) Speeding up your iPhone

Ever been in a highly populated area with 3 or 4 bars and still your iPhone access slows to crawl ?

The most likely reason for this problem is congestion on the provider line. 3g and 4g networks all have a limited sized pipe from the nearest tower back to the Internet. It really does not matter what your theoretical data speed is, when there are more people using the tower than the back-haul pipe can handle, you can temporarily lose service, even when your phone is showing three or four bars.

Unfortunately, you only have a couple of options in this situation. If you are in a stadium with a large crowd, your best bet is to text during the action.  If you wait for a timeout or end of the game,  you’ll find this corresponds to the times when the network slows to a crawl,  so try to finish your access before the last out of the game or the end of the quarter. Pick a time when you know the majority of people are not trying to send data.

Get away from the area of congestion. I have experienced complete lockout of up to 30 minutes, when trying to text, as a sold out stadium emptied out.  In this situation my only chance was  to walk about  1/2 mile or so from the venue to get a text out. Once away from the main stadium, my iPhone connected to a tower with a different back haul away from the congested stadium towers.

8) Kill your virus protection software

With the recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus, it reminded me of  how sometimes the symptoms and carnage from a vaccine are worse than the disease it purports to cure.  Well, the same holds true for your virus protection software. Yes, viruses are real and can take down your computer, but so can a disk crash, which is also inevitable.  You must back up your critical data regularly.  However, that virus software seems to dominate more resources on my desktop than anything else.  I no longer use anything and could not be happier.  But be sure to use a reliable back-up (as you will need to rebuild your computer now and then, which I find a better alternative than running a slow computer all of the time).

9) Bypass that local consumer reseller

This option might be a little bit out of the price range of the average consumer, and it may not be practical logistically -  but if you like to do things out-of-the-box, you don’t have to buy Internet service from your local cable operator or phone company, especially if you are in a metro area.  Many customers we know have actually gone directly to a Tier 1 point of presence (backbone provider) and put in a radio backhaul direct to the source.  There are numerous companies that can set you up with a 40-to-60 megabit link with no gimmicks.

Note these links to commercial tier one providers are pure links to the Internet, and not just a wire speed from your house to the provider that you typically get from a consumer grade service.  See our article on Internet Exchange Points for more details on  this subject.

Related Discussions Speed Testing,

How to test your internet speed Mlab sets the standard.

Related Articles on Caching services

Related Blog Article on Speeding up Internet Services

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Does your ISP restrict you from the public Internet?

April 14, 2013 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

The term, walled off Garden, is the practice of a  service provider  locking  you into their  local content.   A classic  example of the walled off garden  was exemplified by the early years of AOL. Originally when using their dial-up service,  AOL provided all the content you could want.  Access to the actual internet was  granted  by AOL only after other dial-up Internet providers started to compete with their closed offerings.  Today, using much more subtle techniques, Internet providers try to keep you on their networks.  The reason is simple, it costs them money to transfer you across a boundary to another network, and thus,  it is in their economic interest to keep you within their network.

So how do Internet service providers keep you on their network?

1) Sometimes with monetary incentives , for example, with large commercial accounts they just tell you it is going to cost more. My experience with this practice are first hand. I have heard testimonial from many of our customers running   ISPs, mostly outside the US , where they are  sold a chunk of bulk  bandwidth with conditions. The Terms are often something on the order of:

  • - you have a 1  gigabit connection
  • - if you access data outside  the country you can only use 300 megabits.
  • - If you go over 300 megabits outside the country there will hefty additional fees.

obviously there is going to be a trickle down effect where the regional ISP is going to try to discourage usage outside of the local country under such terms.

2) Then there are more passive techniques such as blatantly looking at your private traffic and just not letting off their network. This technique was used in the US,  implemented by large service providers back in the mid 2000′s.  Basically they targeted peer-to-peer requests and made sure you did not leave their network. Essentially you would only find content from other users within your providers network, even though it would appear as though you were searching the entire Internet.  Special equipment was used to intercept your requests and only allow to you probe other users within your providers network thus saving them money by avoiding Internet Exchange fees.

3) Another way your provider will try  to keep you on their network is offer local mirrored content. Basically they keep a copy of common files at a central location . In most cases this  actually causes the user no harm as they still get the same content. But it can cause problems if not done correctly, they risk sending out old data or obsolete news stories that have been updates.

4) Lastly some governments just outright block content, but this is for mostly political reasons.

Editors Note: There are also political reasons to control where you go on the Internet Practiced in China and Iran

Related Article Aol folds original content operations

Related Article: Why Caching alone won’t speed up your Internet

Posted in Commentary and Editorials, Net Neutrality. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Imagine Unlimited Bandwidth

March 27, 2013 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman – CTO – www.netequalizer.com

Art Reisman CTO www.netequalizer.com

I was feeling a bit idealistic today about the future of bandwidth, so I jotted these words down. I hope it brightens your day

Imagine there’s no congestion
 It’s easy if you try
No hidden fees surprise us
Above us high speed guy
Imagine all providers, giving bandwidth away

Imagine there’s no Quota’s
It isn’t hard to use
 No killer apps that die for
A lack of bandwidth too
Imagine all the gamers living layer 7 free

You may say, I’m a streamer
But I’m just gonna download one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And your speed concerns will be done

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What is a transparent bridge, and why can’t we use them in a wireless network to reduce congestion?

March 16, 2013 — netequalizer

Back in the early days of the telephone, customers had what was called a party line. In this setup, the phone company strings  one common phone line into a neighborhood, and when
a phone call was intended for your house, the operator would ring the line with your designated number of rings. You were on the honor system to pick up
and listen only when the ringing was intended for your house. It takes little imagination to understand that only one person could be on the phone at the same time with this shared configuration.

antique phone and generator oak box 1920's 1930'?

Flash forward to 2013, and a modern computer network . Believe it or not the local  (ethernet) network works much the same as a party line.  All computers on the network listen and are only supposed to answer when being talked to. The idea of ethernet bridge came along when somebody figured out you could have a device on the wire that would prevent unwanted Ethernet packets ( analogous to rings) from traversing a segment of the wire they are not intended for. The benefit of the bridging device is to segment of the transmissions on a wire and reduce a good bit of the overhead from data not intended for your  network segment.

Wireless networks, based on 802.11 technology also could benefit from  a transparent bridge. They share the property that all shared devices must listen for their address and only answer when spoken to. Unfortunately there is no good place to insert a bridge device on a wireless network.  There is no wire containment of transmissions.  For the most part, once broadcast, transmissions spread out in all directions ,and thus nothing can stop a wireless transmission from reaching unintended devices. The only thing a network operator can do to relieve congestion is to divide the network up in geographic segments and limit the power at each tower from encroaching on neighboring segments.

Related Article: More ideas on how to improve wireless network quality.

Posted in Commentary and Editorials. Leave a Comment »

Is the Reseller Channel for Network Equipment Declining?

March 7, 2013 — netequalizer

Back in 2008, TMCnet posed an interesting question about traditional PBX vendors. Has VOIP outgrown traditional business service channels? And that got me wondering, what is going on in the traditional network equipment channel? Is it starting to erode in favor of direct sales?

We are seeing a split in buying patterns.

1) Companies that do not have an in house staff generally make their equipment purchases based on the advice of their Network Consultants, VARs or local reseller.

The line between Network Consultants and VARs has always been a bit muddy.  Most network consultants tend to dabble in reselling.  Hence this relationship behaves like the traditional channel where consultants and VARs represent specific manufactures, and  mark up equipment to make margins. Customers benefit because the true cost of the consulting, to design and deploy their  networks, is subsidized by the margins the VARs make on their equipment sales.

2) On the other hand, companies and institutions with  in house IT staffs are starting to get away from the traditional equipment reseller.  They are more likely to do their research on line, and are more than willing to buy outside of a traditional channel.  This creates a strange double edged sword for OEMs,  as they are heavily dependent on the relationships of their channel partners to move equipment. For the same reason that those factory outlet stores are located outside of town, OEMs do not want to shoot themselves in the foot by selling direct and competing with their resellers.

Even though there is some degradation in the traditional channel, I don’t think we will see its demise any time soon for a couple of reasons.

1) Network solutions remain labor intensive, and expertise will always be at a minimum. Even with cloud based computing there is still a good bit of infrastructure required at the enterprise and this bodes well for the VARs and reseller who offer their expertise while acting as the conduit to move equipment with mark-up from the OEMs

2) Network equipment itself resists becoming a commodity. Yes home routers and such have gone that route, but with advanced features such as bandwidth optimization and security driving the market , network equipment remains complex enough to justify the value added channel.

What are you seeing?

Related Article:  Us channel sales flat for third straight year.

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A Brief History of Peer to Peer File Sharing and the Attempts to Block It

February 8, 2013 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

The following history is based on my notes and observations as both a user of peer to peer, and as a network engineer tasked with cleaning  it up.

Round One, Napster, Centralized Server, Circa 2002

Napster was a centralized service, unlike the peer to peer behemoths of today there was never any question of where the copyrighted material was being stored and pirated from. Even though Napster did not condone pirated music and movies on their site, the courts decided by allowing copyrighted material to exist on their servers, they were in violation of copyright law. Napster’s days of free love were soon over.

From an historic perspective the importance of the decision to force the shut down of Napster was that it gave rise to a whole new breed of p2p applications. We detailed this phenomenon in our 2008 article.

Round Two, Mega-Upload  Shutdown, Centralized Server, 2012

We again saw a doubling down on p2p client sites (they expanded) when the Mega-Upload site, a centralized sharing site, was shutdown back in Jan 2012.

“On the legal side, the recent widely publicized MegaUpload takedown refocused attention on less centralized forms of file sharing (i.e. P2P). Similarly, improvements in P2P technology coupled with a growth in file sharing file size from content like Blue-Ray video also lead many users to revisit P2P.”

Read the full article from deepfield.net

The shut down of Mega-Upload had a personal effect on me as I had used it to distribute a 30 minute account from a 92-year-old WWII vet where he recalled, in oral detail, his experience of surviving a German prison camp.

Blocking by Signature, Alias Layer 7 Shaping, Alias Deep packet inspection. Late 1990′s till present

Initially, the shining star savior in the forefront against spotting illegal content on your network, this technology can be expensive and fail miserably in the face of newer encrypted p2p applications. It also can get quite expensive to keep up with the ever changing application signatures, and yet it is still often the first line of defense attempted by ISPs.

We covered this topic in detail, in our recent article,  Layer 7 Shaping Dying With SSL.

Blocking by Website

Blocking the source sites where users download their p2p clients is still possible. We see this method applied at mostly private secondary schools, where content blocking is an accepted practice. This method does not work for computers and devices that already have p2p clients. Once loaded, p2p files can come from anywhere and there is no centralized site to block.

Blocking Uninitiated Requests. Circa Mid-2000

The idea behind this method is to prevent your Network from serving up any content what so ever! Sounds a bit harsh, but the average Internet consumer rarely, if ever, hosts anything intended for public consumption. Yes at one time, during the early stages of the Internet, my geek friends would set up home pages similar to what everybody exposes on Facebook today. Now, with the advent hosting sites, there is just no reason for a user to host content locally, and thus, no need to allow access from the outside. Most firewalls have a setting to disallow uninitiated requests into your network (obviously with an exemption for your publicly facing servers).

We actually have an advanced version of this feature in our NetGladiator security device. We watch each IP address on your internal network and take note of outgoing requests, nobody comes in unless they were invited. For example, if we see a user on the Network make a request to a Yahoo Server , we expect a response to come back from a Yahoo server; however if we see a Yahoo server contact a user on your network without a pending request, we block that incoming request. In the world of p2p this should prevent an outside client from requesting a receiving a copyrighted file hosted on your network, after all no p2p client is going to randomly send out invites to outside servers or would they?

I spent a few hours researching this subject, and here is what I found (this may need further citations). It turns out that p2p distribution may be a bit more sophisticated and has ways to get around the block uninitiated query firewall technique.

P2P networks such as Pirate Bay use a directory service of super nodes to keep track of what content peers have and where to find them. When you load up your p2p client for the first time, it just needs to find one super node to get connected, from there it can start searching for available files.

Note: You would think that if these super nodes were aiding and abetting in illegal content that the RIAA could just shut them down like they did Napster. There are two issues with this assumption:
1) The super nodes do not necessarily host content, hence they are not violating any copyright laws. They simply coordinate the network in the same way DNS service keep track of URL names and were to find servers.
2) The super nodes are not hosted by Pirate Bay, they are basically commandeered from their network of users, who unwittingly or unknowingly agree to perform this directory service when clicking the license agreement that nobody ever reads.

From my research I have talked to network administrators that claim despite blocking uninitiated outside requests on their firewalls, they still get RIAA notices. How can this be?

There are only two ways this can happen.

1) The RIAA is taking liberty to simply accuse a network of illegal content based on the directory listings of a super node. In other words if they find a directory on a super node pointing to copyrighted files on your network, that might be information enough to accuse you.

2) More likely, and much more complex, is that the Super nodes are brokering the transaction as a condition of being connected. Basically this means that when a p2p client within your network, contacts a super node for information, the super node directs the client to send data to a third-party client on another network. Thus the send of information from the inside of your network looks to the firewall as if it was initiated from within. You may have to think about this, but it makes sense.

Behavior based thwarting of p2p. Circa 2004 – NetEqualizer

Behavior-based shaping relies on spotting the unique footprint of a client sending and receiving p2p applications. From our experience, these clients just do not know how to lay low and stay under the radar. It’s like the criminal smuggling drugs doing 100 MPH on the highway, they just can’t help themselves. Part of the p2p methodology is to find as many sources of files as possible, and then, download from all sources simultaneously. Combine this behavior with the fact that most p2p consumers are trying to build up a library of content, and thus initiating many file requests, and you get a behavior footprint that can easily be spotted. By spotting this behavior and making life miserable for these users, you can achieve self compliance on your network.

Read a smarter way to block p2p traffic.

Blocking the RIAA probing servers

If you know where the RIAA is probing from you can deny all traffic to their probes and thus prevent the probe of files on your network, and ensuing nasty letters to desist.

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Commentary and Editorials. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Can Rural Internet Services be Subsidized with Advertising?

January 29, 2013 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

I just read a Wall Street Journal article this morning regarding the lack of home Internet service in poor rural areas. In this story, the children of Cirtronelle, Alabama are forced to do their homework at the local McDonald’s because the local Library closes at 6, and they must use the Internet to complete their school assignments. Internet at home is either not available or it is too expensive.

This got me thinking of an idea that had been bandied around for quite some time with some of our rural WISP NetEqualizer customers. It has been a while, but we actually helped a few operators set up systems with some form of on-line advertising (prior to the great recession). For example, the base minimum  subscription price required for a rural WISP to turn a profit starts at around $40 to $50 a month. So what if a WISP sold a lower grade service, $10 a month, and then required that each time a home user logged on  to the service, that they were presented with a 20 second promo trailer from a local merchant? The Merchant would then subsidize the WISP per showing. Would this be a viable alternative to stimulate rural Internet services?

I am sure many a WISP has tried this, and I suspect the barriers are:

1) The mechanics of redirection and authentication, in other words this requires a much more complex authentication infrastructure than what a small WISP would typical start with.

2) Selling advertisement space, this would be a full time hustle to keep slots filled and paying.

3) Justifying the return on investment to the advertiser.

Comments and/or ideas are welcome!

admin@netequalizer.com

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Deja Vu, IVR, and the Online Shopper’s Bill of Rights

December 16, 2012 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman
CTO
www.apconnections.net
www.netequalizer.com

My Bill of Rights for how the online shopping experience should be in a perfect world.

1) Ship to multiple addresses. This means specifically the ability to ship any item in an order to any address.

2) On the confirmation page, always let the user edit their order right there, delete, change quantity, ship to address, shipping options, etc. All buttons should be available for each item.

3) Never force the user to hit the back button for any mistake, assume they need to edit everything from every page, as if in a fully connected matrix. Let them navigate to anywhere from anywhere.

4) Don’t show items out of stock or on back order UNLESS the customer requests to see that garbage.

5) You had better know what is out of stock. :)

6) The submit button should immediately disappear when it is hit, it is either hit or not hit, and there should be no way for a customer to order something twice by accident or to be left wondering if they have ordered twice. The system should also display the appropriate status messages while an order is being processed.

7) If there is a problem on any page in the ordering process, a detailed message on what the problem was should appear at the top of page, along with highlighting the problem field, leaving a customer to wonder what they did wrong is just bad.

8) Gift wrap available or not when selecting an item, not at the end of the ordering process.

9) If the item or order is not under your inventory control then don’t sell it or pretend to sell it without a disclaimer.

10) Remember all the fields when navigating between options. For example, a user should never have to fill out an address twice unless it is a new address.

Why is it so hard to solve these problems ?

Long before the days of Internet, I was a system architect charged with designing an Integrated Voice Response product called Conversant (Conversant was one of the predecessors to Avaya IP Office). Although not nearly as wide-spread as the Internet of today, most large companies provided automated services over the phone throughout the 1990′s. Perhaps you are familiar with a typical IVR – Press 1 for sales, press 2 for support, etc. In an effort to reduce labor costs, companies also used the phone touch tone interface for more complex operations such as tracking your package or placing an order on a stock. It turns out that most of the quality factors associated with designing an IVR application of yesterday are now reflected in many of the issues facing the online shopping experience of today.

Most small companies really don’t have the resources to use anything more than a templated application. Sometimes the pre-built application is flawed, but more often than not, the application needs integration into the merchants back-end and business processes. The pre-built applications come with programming stubs for error conditions which must be handled. For small businesses, even the simplest customizations to an on-line application will run a minimum of 10k in programmer costs, and to hire a reputable company that specializes in customer integration is more like 50k.

Related Internet users bill of rights

Posted in Business Advice, Commentary and Editorials. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Will Bandwidth Shaping Ever Be Obsolete?

December 1, 2012 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

CTO – www.netequalizer.com

I find public forums where universities openly share information about their bandwidth shaping policies an excellent source of information. Unlike commercial providers, these user groups have found technical collaboration is in their best interest, and they often openly discuss current trends in bandwidth control.

A recent university IT user group discussion thread kicked off with the following comment:

“We are in the process of trying to decide whether or not to upgrade or all together remove our packet shaper from our residence hall network.  My network engineers are confident we can accomplish rate limiting/shaping through use of our core equipment, but I am not convinced removing the appliance will turn out well.”

Notice that he is not talking about removing rate limits completely, just backing off from an expensive extra piece of packet shaping equipment and using the simpler rate limits available on his router.  The point of my reference to this discussion is not so much to discourse over the different approaches of rate limiting, but to emphasize, at this point in time, running wide-open without some sort of restriction is not even being considered.

Despite an 80 to 90 percent reduction in bulk bandwidth prices in the past few years, bandwidth is not quite yet cheap enough for an ISP to run wide-open. Will it ever be possible for an ISP to run wide-open without deliberately restricting their users?

The answer is not likely.

First of all, there seems to be no limit to the ways consumer devices and content providers will conspire to gobble bandwidth. The common assumption is that no matter what an ISP does to deliver higher speeds, consumer appetite will outstrip it.

Yes, an ISP can temporarily leap ahead of demand.

We do have a precedent from several years ago. In 2006, the University of Brighton in the UK was able to unplug our bandwidth shaper without issue. When I followed up with their IT director, he mentioned that their students’ total consumption was capped by the far end services of the Internet, and thus they did not hit their heads on the ceiling of the local pipes. Running without restriction, 10,000 students were not able to eat up their 1 gigabit pipe! I must caveat this experiment by saying that in the UK their university system had invested heavily in subsidized bandwidth and were far ahead of the average ISP curve for the times. Content services on the Internet for video were just not that widely used by students at the time. Such an experiment today would bring a pipe under a similar contention ratio to its knees in a few seconds. I suspect today one would need more or on the order of 15 to 25 gigabits to run wide open without contention-related problems.

It also seems that we are coming to the end of the line for bandwidth in the wireless world much more quickly than wired bandwidth.

It is unlikely consumers are going to carry cables around with their iPad’s and iPhones to plug into wall jacks any time soon. With the diminishing returns in investment for higher speeds on the wireless networks of the world, bandwidth control is the only way to keep order of some kind.

Lastly I do not expect bulk bandwidth prices to continue to fall at their present rate.

The last few years of falling prices are the result of a perfect storm of factors not likely to be repeated.

For these reasons, it is not likely that bandwidth control will be obsolete for at least another decade. I am sure we will be revisiting this issue in the next few years for an update.

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Commentary and Editorials, Wireless Internet. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Internet User’s Bill of Rights

November 27, 2012 — netequalizer

This is the second article in our series. Our first was a Bill of Rights dictating the etiquette of software updates. We continue with a proposed Bill of Rights for consumers with respect to their Internet service.

1) Providers must divulge the contention ratio of their service.

At the core of all Internet service is a balancing act between the number of people that are sharing a resource and how much of that resource is available.

For example, a typical provider starts out with a big pipe of Internet access that is shared via exchange points with other large providers. They then subdivide this access out to their customers in ever smaller chunks — perhaps starting with a gigabit exchange point and then narrowing down to a 10 megabit local pipe that is shared with customers across a subdivision or area of town.

The speed you, the customer, can attain is limited to how many people might be sharing that 10 megabit local pipe at any one time. If you are promised one megabit service, it is likely that your provider would have you share your trunk with more than 10 subscribers and take advantage of the natural usage behavior, which assumes that not all users are active at one time.

The exact contention ratio will vary widely from area to area, but from experience, your provider will want to maximize the number of subscribers who can share the pipe, while minimizing service complaints due to a slow network. In some cases, I have seen as many as 1,000 subscribers sharing 10 megabits. This is a bit extreme, but even with a ratio as high as this, subscribers will average much faster speeds when compared to dial up.

2) Service speeds should be based on the amount of bandwidth available at the providers exchange point and NOT the last mile.

Even if your neighborhood (last mile) link remains clear, your provider’s connection can become saturated at its exchange point. The Internet is made up of different provider networks and backbones. If you send an e-mail to a friend who receives service from a company other than your provider, then your ISP must send that data on to another network at an exchange point. The speed of an exchange point is not infinite, but is dictated by the type of switching equipment. If the exchange point traffic exceeds the capacity of the switch or receiving carrier, then traffic will slow.

3) No preferential treatment to speed test sites.

It is possible for an ISP to give preferential treatment to individual speed test sites. Providers have all sorts of tools at their disposal to allow and disallow certain kinds of traffic. There should never be any preferential treatment to a speed test site.

4) No deliberate re-routing of traffic.

Another common tactic to save resources at the exchange points of a provider is to re-route file-sharing requests to stay within their network. For example, if you were using a common file-sharing application such as BitTorrent, and you were looking some non-copyrighted material, it would be in your best interest to contact resources all over the world to ensure the fastest download.

However, if your provider can keep you on their network, they can avoid clogging their exchange points. Since companies keep tabs on how much traffic they exchange in a balance sheet, making up for surpluses with cash, it is in their interest to keep traffic confined to their network, if possible.

5) Clearly disclose any time of day bandwidth restrictions.

The ability to increase bandwidth for a short period of time and then slow you down if you persist at downloading is another trick ISPs can use. Sometimes they call this burst speed, which can mean speeds being increased up to five megabits, and they make this sort of behavior look like a consumer benefit. Perhaps Internet usage will seem a bit faster, but it is really a marketing tool that allows ISPs to advertise higher connection speeds – even though these speeds can be sporadic and short-lived.

For example, you may only be able to attain five megabits at 12:00 a.m. on Tuesdays, or some other random unknown times. Your provider is likely just letting users have access to higher speeds at times of low usage. On the other hand, during busier times of day, it is rare that these higher speeds will be available.

There is now a consortium called M-Lab which has put together a sophisticated speed test site designed to give specific details on what your ISP is doing to your connection. See the article below for more information.

Related article Ten things your internet provider does not want you to know.

Related article On line shoppers bill of rights

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Is Your Data Really Secure?

October 19, 2012 — netequalizer

By Zack Sanders

Most businesses, if asked, would tell you they do care about the security of their customers. The controversial part of security comes to a head when you ask the question in a different way. Does your business care enough about security to make an investment in protecting customer data? There are a few companies that proactively invest in security for security’s sake, but they are largely in the minority.

The two key driving factors that determine a business’s commitment to security investment are:

1) Government or Industry Standard Compliance – This is what drives businesses like your credit card company, your local bank, and your healthcare provider to care about security. In order to operate, they are forced to care. Standards like HIPAA and PCI require them to go through security audits and checkups. Note: And just because they invest in meeting a compliance standard,  it may not translate to secure data, as we will point out below.

2) A Breach Occurs – Nothing will change an organization’s attitude toward security like a massive, embarrassing security breach. Sadly, it usually takes something like this happening to drive home the point that security is important for everyone.

The fact is, most businesses are running on very thin margins and other operating operating costs come before security spending. Human nature is such that we prioritize by what is in front of us now. What we don’t know can’t hurt us. It is easy for a business to assume that their minimum firewall configuration is good enough for now. Unfortunately they cannot easily see the holes in their firewall. Most firewall security can easily be breached through advertised public interfaces.

How do we know? Because we often do complimentary spot checks on company web servers. It is a rare case when we  have not been able to break in, attaining access to all customer records. Even though our sample set is small, our breach rate is so high, we can reliably extrapolate that most companies can easily be broken into.

As we eluded to above, even some of the companies that follow a standard are still vulnerable. Many large corporations  just go through the motions to comply with a standard, so they might typically seek out “trusted,” large professional services firms to do their audits. Often, these companies will conduct boiler plate assessments where auditors run down a checklist with the sole goal of certifying the application or organization as compliant.

Hiring a huge firm to do an audit makes it much easier to deflect blame in the case of an incident. The employee responsible for hiring the audit firm can say, “Well, I hired XXX – what more could I have done?” If they had hired a small firm to do the audit, and a breach occurred, their judgement and job might come into question – however unfair that might be.

As a professional web application security analyst that has personally handled the aftermath of many serious security breaches, I would advocate that if you take your security seriously, start with an assessment challenge using a firm that will work to expose your real world vulnerabilities.

Posted in Business Advice, Commentary and Editorials, Security. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

How to Put a Value on IT Consulting

October 18, 2012 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

This post was inspired after a conversation with one of our IT resellers.  My commentary is based on thousands of  experiences I have had helping solve client network IT  issues over the past 20 years.

There is a wide range of ability in the network consulting world, and the right IT consultant is just as important as choosing a reliable car or plane. Short changing yourself on a shiny new paint job with a low price can lead to disaster.

The problem clients must overcome when picking a consultant is that often the person doing the hiring is not an experienced IT professional, hence it is hard to  judge IT competency. A person who has not had to solve real world networking problems may have no good reference point to judge an IT consultant. It would be like me auditioning pianists for admission to the Julliard School (also a past customer of ours).  I could not ever hope to choose between the nuances of great pianist versus a bar hack playing pop songs. In the world of IT, on face value, the talent of an IT person is also hard to differentiate. A nice guy with good people skills is important but does not prove IT competency. Certifications are fine, but are also not a guarantee of competency. Going back to my Julliard example, perhaps with a few tips from an expert I could narrow the field a bit ?

Below are some ideas that should provide some guidance when narrowing your choice of IT consultant.

The basic difference in competency, as measured by results, will come down to  those professionals that can solve new problems as presented and those that can’t. For example, a consultant without unique problem solving skills will always try to map a new problem as a variation of an old problem, and thus will tend to go down a trial an error check list in sequential order. This will work for solving very basic problems based on their knowledge base of known problems, but it can really rack up the hours and downtime when this person is presented with a new issue not previously encountered.  I would ask this question of a potential consultant. Even if you are non technical ask the question, and listen for enthusiasm in the answer not so much details.

“Can you run me through an example of any unique networking problem you have encountered, and what method you used to solve it?” A good networking person will be full and proud of their war stories, and should actually enjoy talking about them.

The other obvious place to find a networking consultant is from a reference, but be careful. I would only value the reference if the party giving it has had severe IT failures for comparison.

There are plenty of competent IT people that can do the standard stuff, the person giving a reference will only be valuable if they have gone from bad to good, or vice versa. If they start with good, they will assume all IT people are like this, and not appreciate what they have stumbled into.  If they start with average, they will not know it is average, until they experience good. The  average IT person will be busy all the time,  and eventually solve problems via the brute force method. In their processes they will sound intelligent and always have an issue to solve (often of their own bumbling)   Until a reference experiences the efficiency of somebody really good as a comparison  a good IT person is hardly ever noticed) they won’t have the reference point.

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Networking Equipment and Virtual Machines Do Not Mix

October 4, 2012 — netequalizer

By Joe DEsopo

Editors Note:
We often get asked why we don’t offer our NetEqualizer as a virtual machine. Although the excerpt below is geared toward the NetEqualizer, you could just as easily substitute the word  “router” or “firewall” in place of NetEqualizer and the information would apply to just about any networking product on the market. For example, even a simple Linksys router has a version of Linux under the hood and to my knowlege they don’t offer that product as VM. In the following excerpt lifted from a real response to one of our larger customers (a hotel operator), we detail the reasons.

————————————————————————–

Dear Customer

We’ve very consciously decided not to release a virtualized copy of the software. The driver for our decision is throughput performance and accuracy.

As you can imagine, The NetEqualizer is optimized to do very fast packet/flow accounting and rule enforcement while minimizing unwanted negative effects (latencies, etc…) in networks. As you know, the NetEqualizer needs to operate in the sub-second time domain over what could be up to tens of thousands of flows per second.

As part of our value proposition, we’ve been successful, where others have not, at achieving tremendous throughput levels on low cost commodity platforms (Intel based Supermicro motherboards), which helps us provide a tremendous pricing advantage (typically we are 1/3 – 1/5 the price of alternative solutions). Furthermore, from an engineering point of view, we have learned from experience that slight variations in Linux, System Clocks, NIC Drivers, etc… can lead to many unwanted effects and we often have to re-optimize our system when these things are upgraded. In some special areas, in order to enable super-fast speeds, we’ve had to write our own Kernel-level code to bypass unacceptable speed penalties that we would otherwise have to live with on generic Linux systems. To some degree, this is our “secret sauce.” Nevertheless, I hope you can see that the capabilities of the NetEqualizer can only be realized by a carefully engineered synergy between our Software, Linux and the Hardware.

With that as a background, we have taken the position that a virtualized version of the NetEqualizer would not be in anyone’s best interest.   The fact is, we need to know and understand the specific timing tolerances in any given moment and system environment.  This is especially true if a bug is encountered in the field and we need to reproduce it in our labs in order to isolate and fix the problem (note: many bugs we find our not of our own making – they are often changes in Linux that used to work fine, but for some reason have changed in a newer release and we are unaware and that requires us to discover and re-optimize around).

I hope I’ve done a good job of explaining the technical complexities surrounding a “virtualized” NetEqualizer.  I know it sounds like a great idea, but really we think it cannot be done to an acceptable level of performance and support.

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The Internet was Never Intended for On-demand TV and Movies

September 30, 2012 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

www.netequalizer.com

I just got off the phone with one our customers who happens to be a large ISP. He chewed me out because we were throttling his video, and his customers were complaining. I tell him, if we did not throttle his video during peak times, his whole pipe would come to screeching halt. Seems everybody is looking for a magic bullet to squeeze blood from a turnip.

Can the Internet be retrofitted for video?

Yes, there are a few tricks an ISP can do to make video more acceptable, but the bottom line is, the Internet was never intended to deliver video.

One basic basic trick being used to eek out some video, is to cache local copies of video content, and then deliver it to you when you click a URL for a movie. This technique follows along the same path as the original on demand video of the 1980′s. The kind of service where you called your cable company and purchased a movie to start at 3:00 pm.  Believe it or not, there was often a video player with a cassette at other end of the cable going into your home, and your provider would just turn the video player on with the movie at the prescribed time. Today, the selection of available video has expanded and the delivery mechanism has gotten a bit more sophisticated, but for the most part, popular video is delivered via a direct wire from the operator into your home. It is usually NOT coming across the public Internet, it only appears that way (if it came across the Internet it would be slow and sporadic). Content that comes from the open Internet must come through an exchange point, and if your ISP has to rely on their exchange point to retrieve video content, things can get congested rather quickly.

What is an Internet Exchange point and why does it matter?

Perhaps an explanation of exchange points might help. Think of a giant railroad yard, where trains from all over the country converge and then return from where they came. In the yard they exchange their goods with the other train operators. For example, a train from Montana brings in coal destined for power plants in the east, and the trains from the east brings mining supplies and food for the people of Montana. As per a gentleman’s agreement, the railroad companies will transfer some goods to other operators, and take some goods in return. Although fictional, this would be a fair trade agreement. The fair trade in our railroad example works as as long as everybody exchanges about the same amount of stuff. But, suppose one day a train from the south shows up with 10 times the size load they wish to exchange data with, and suppose their goods are perishable, like raw milk products. Not only do they have more than their fair share to exchange, but they also have a time dependency on the exchange. They must get their milk to other markets quickly or it loses all value. You can imagine that the some of the railroads in the exchange co-operative would be overloaded and problems would arise.

I wish I could take every media person who writes about the Internet, take them into a room, and not let them leave until they understand the concept of an Internet exchange point. The Internet is founded on a best effort exchange agreement. Everything is built off this mode, and it cannot easily be changed.

So how does this relate back to the problems of video?

There really is no problem with the Internet, it works as intended and is a magnificent model of best effort exchange. The problem occurs with the delusion of content providers pumping video content into the pipes without any consideration of what might happen at the exchange points.

A bit of quick history on exchange point evolution.

Over the years, the original government network operators started exchanging with private operators, such as AT&T, Verizon, and Level 3. These private operators have made great improvement efforts to the capacity of their links and exchange points, but the basic problem still exists. The sender and receiver never have any guarantee if their real time streaming video will get to the other end in a timely manner.

As for caching, it is a band aid, and works some of the time for the most popular videos that get watched over and over again, but it does not solve the problem at the exchange points, and consumers and providers are always pumping more content into the pipes.

So can the problem of streaming content be solved?

The short answer is yes, but it would not be the Internet. I suspect one might call it the Internet for marketing purposes, but out of necessity. It would be some new network with a different political structure and entirely different rules. This would have much higher cost to ensure data paths for video, and operators would have to pass the cost of transport and path set up directly on to the content providers to make it work. Best effort fair exchange would be out of the picture.

For example, over the years I have seen numerous plans by wizards who draw up block diagrams on how to make the Internet a signaling switching network, instead of a best effort network. Each time I see one of these plans, I just sort of shrug. It has been done before and done very well,  they never consider the data networks originally built by AT&T, which was a fully functional switched network for sending data to anybody with guaranteed bandwidth. We’ll see where we end up.

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Commentary and Editorials. Tags: , , . 3 Comments »

Nine Tips for Organic Technology Start Ups

August 28, 2012 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

Art is CTO and Co-Founder of APconnections – makers of the NetEqualizer. NetEqualizer is used by thousands of ISPs worldwide to arbitrate bandwidth. He is also the principal engineer and inventor of the Kent Moore EVA, a product used to trouble shoot millions of vehicle vibration issues since 1992.

1) Find somebody who has built at least two businesses on their own, and better yet, somebody that has done it more than once from scratch.

For example, a Harvard MBA that went to work for Goldman-Sachs right out of school has no idea what you are up against. They may be brilliant, but without experience specifically in the field of growing a start up, their education and experience is not as good as somebody who had done it on their own.

2) Be leery of late 1990′s dot com moguls.

Many good people got lucky during those years. It was a rare time that will likely never happen again. Yes, there are as some true stars from that era, but most were just people who were in the right place at the right time. Their experiences generally don’t translate to a market place where money is tight and you must bite and scratch for every inch of success.

3) Be careful not to give too much credence to the advice of current and former executives at large companies.

They are great if you are looking for connections and introductions within those companies, but rarely do they understand bootstrapping a start up. These executives most likely operated in a company with large resources and rampant bueracracy that required a completely different set of skills than a start up.

4) Amazingly, I have found Real Estate Broker(s) are a great source for marketing ideas.

Not the agents, but the founders of the companies that built real estate companies up from scratch. I can assure you they have some creative ideas that will translate to your tech business.

5) Product companies must avoid the consulting trap.

If you produce a software product and (or any product for that matter), you will always be inundated for specialty, one-off, requests from customers. These requests are well intentioned, but you can’t let your time and direction of a single customer drive your feature set. The exception to this rule is obviously if you are getting similar requests from multiple customers. If you start building special features for single customers, ultimately you will barely break even, and may go broke trying to please them. At some point (now), you have to say this is our product, and this is our price, and these are the features, and if a customer needs specialty features, you will need to politely decline. If your competition takes up your account on promises of customization, you can be sure they are spreading their resources thin.

6) Validate your product see if you can sell to strangers.

Early on, you need to sell what you have to somebody that is not a friend. Friends are great for testing a product, or making you feel good, or talking up your company, but for real honest feedback on whether your product will be a commercial success you need to find somebody that buys your product. I don’t really care if it is a $10 sale or a $10,000 sale, it is important to establish that somebody is willing to purchase your product. From there, you can work on pricing models. Perfection is great but don’t stay in development for years making things better and perfecting your support channel, or whatever. The reality is you have to sell something to build momentum and delay to market is your enemy. If you do not find customers willing to commit their hard earned money for your product at some early stage you do not have a product.

You should be able to take early deposits on the concept if nothing else.

7) Don’t spend precious cash on patents and lawyers to defend non existing value.

As an organic or unfunded start up, the last thing you need to worry about is somebody stealing your idea, and yet this is the first piece of advice you are going to get from everybody you know. The fact is, there are millions of patents out there for failed products protecting nothing. I suppose it could happen, somebody steals your idea and profits before you get off the ground, but it is much more likely you will waste 6 months mortgage on a patent that you’ll never get a chance to defend. Even if you have a patent, you won’t be able to defend yourself with a large pocketed rival. The good news is if you have a good growing idea, investors will take care of the protection of your idea when they buy you.

8) Become an expert in your field. Maybe you are already? Sounds obvious, but make sure you know every detail of your technology and how it can help your customers.

9) Test the market like Billy Mays (may he rest in peace).

Before he passed away, Billy and his partner had a show where they took you through the test market phase of the products they introduced. The plan was simple, build a cheesy commercial to demo the cheesy product. Then run your advertisements in a small market metro area on late night TV. Although your audience may be insomniacs watching re-runs of old movies late at night, you need to find a way to test market your idea and get honest feedback (people calling trying to buy your product is a good indicator). You might even want to run some teasers to your market before you launch, but do so with limited resources. If you get a representative sample, you can then decide to ramp up from there with some confidence.

10) Need verses buy. The only measure of success is from somebody buying your product. Just because people “need” your product is not an indicator of if they are willing to pay for it. People “need” lots of things and only actually buy a small percentage. I need a bigger house , a nice car, a vacation to Hawaii. I also need a sprinkler system, faster computer, but I bought none of these things this past year.

In the last four years from 2008 and to 2012 hot selling items have been very basic services, such as telephone systems, heat, advertising.  Very few businesses are buying anything beyond the essentials in any quantity. This could change if the economy goes back into a growth phase, but the point here is to build something that is a necessity with clear value and you must test that value by selling product, an open wallet is the only to validate need verses buy Marketing surveys of intentions will not tell the truth. Don’t get me wrong there is always opportunity out there, but you constantly need to validate your threshold of value by selling something.

 

 

Related Business Advice Articles.

Tips to make your WISP more profitable

Terry Gold’s blog has a good bit of Advice Sprinkled throughout

How I got my start the story of NetEqualizer

Building a software company from Scratch

Posted in Business Advice, Commentary and Editorials. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »
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