June 2013
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Greetings! Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we preview our new Dynamic Real-Time Reporting Tool, announce our quarterly FlyAway Contest winner, celebrate our 10th Anniversary, and discuss our upcoming Technical Seminar! As always, feel free to pass this along to others who might be interested in NetEqualizer News. |
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A message from Art…
Art Reisman, CTO – APconnections
Ten years ago this summer I was feverishly developing the original DPI version of the NetEqualizer, and getting We love it when we hear back from you – so if you have a story you would like to share with us of how we have helped you, let us know. Email me directly at art@apconnections.net. I would love to hear from you! |
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Software Update 7.1: Dynamic Real-Time Reporting is Here! We are excited to announce that our built-in version of the Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR) tool is ready for release to all customers on Software Update 7.0+! One of the things that differentiates the NetEqualizer from other monitoring and shaping tools is that we have the actual data for every user accurately updated by the second. The reporting tools on most other devices tend to slog along and show you aggregate usage of 5 minute averages. Even the charge back mechanisms that ISPs use to figure out if you are over your allotted bandwidth do 95th percentile sampling – meaning they estimate your usage from sporadic sampling. One thing we have not been good at, until now, is making this wealth of real data available to the end user in a nice organized usable presentation. As of this week that is going to change. In our 7.1 Software Update we have upgraded to a more robust Apache Web server shipping with every system. This has allowed us to take some of real time data and offer the administrator some nicer tools. For example, you can: – View active connections running through your NetEqualizer and search or sort them however you like.
– View the state of all currently penalized flows. See which flows are newly penalized, which have had their penalties increased, and which have had their penalties decreased.
– View, search and sort all running processes to easily spot problems with your device. Stay tuned to NetEqualizer News for updates on new features! The RTR tool is free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.0+. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today! -or- toll-free U.S. (888-287-2492), worldwide (303) 997-1300 x. 103 We are starting to plan for our next Technical Seminar! This popular seminar brings our CTO, Art Reisman, directly to you. In this half day event, Art explores the NetEqualizer technology in detail, and answers your technical questions. We will also be discussing and answering questions about our NetGladiator security appliance! Lunch will be provided to all attendees. In this Technical Seminar, you will experience the following:
Please note that this is NOT a marketing presentation – it is run by & created for techies! Whether you are an existing customer or just starting to think about bandwidth shaping, come learn more about the NetEqualizer technology and share your experiences with other customers.
We are also currently looking for a location to host the seminar sometime around October of this year. If you or your organization is interested, please contact us at: And the FlyAway Contest Winner Is… Every few months, we have a drawing to give away two round-trip domestic airline tickets from Frontier Airlines to one lucky person who’s recently tried out our online NetEqualizer demo. The time has come to announce this round’s winner. And the winner is… Terrence Shipclark of Humber College. Congratulations, Terrence! Please contact us within 30 days (by July 17, 2013) at: admin@apconnections.net to claim your prize! 10 Year Anniversary Celebration – All Summer Long! We are celebrating 10 years in business this summer, thanks to you, our loyal customers! Our first NetEqualizer sale was a CD version, way back on July 13th, 2003. We have come a long way since then. We have rolled out NetEqualizer appliances to offer a consistent, standard, supportable framework to make it easy for you to own and operate your NetEqualizer. We have built out our core technology, equalizing behavior-based shaping, and added tons of features along the way – such as our Professional Quota API, CALEA, the NetEqualizer Caching Option (NCO), NetEqualizer Directory Integration (NDI), and a new GUI – just to name a few. And we have leaped into the web application security world, introducing our NetGladiator IPS appliances last year.
Thousands of installations later, NetEqualizers are deployed across six (6) continents in small and large businesses, universities, schools, libraries, and internet providers. So, as part of our 10 Year Celebration, we will be donating $25 to one of four charities of the buyer’s choice for each unit sold from now until August 31, 2013. The charities are: 1) United States Fund for UNICEF 2) Habitat for Humanity 3) Doctors Without Borders (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org) 4) Global Hunger Project Contact us today at: -or- toll-free U.S. (800-918-2763), worldwide (303) 997-1300 x. 103 CALEA: A Look Back and Forward
By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections It has been 4 years since the most recent round of CALEA laws took effect. At the time, our phones rang off the hook for several days with calls from various small ISPs worrying that they were going to be shut down if they did not invest in a large expensive CALEA compliant device. Implementation of the law was open to interpretation. Confusion over what CALEA was, stemmed from the fact that the CALEA laws themselves do not contain a technical specification. In essence, they are just laws. Suppose the Harvard Law school became the front end design team for all projects in Harvard’s engineering school. Lawyers write laws, not engineering specifications. And so it was with CALEA, congress wrote a well intended law, but the implementation and enforcement part had to be interpreted. The FBI took the lead and wrote an extremely detailed specification as to what they wanted. The specification covered every scenario possible and thus the scope was costly to implement. Vendors willingly took the complex FBI specification to heart as part of the actual law, and built out high dollar CALEA certified devices. As vendors will do, their sales teams ran with it as gospel and spread fear in order to sell expensive equipment with large margins. Fortunately calmness prevailed at some point, and the FBI consultants worked with us and some of the smaller ISPs on a reasonable scaled down version of their CALEA requirements. Ironically, even the current law has now become problematic for the FBI and they are requesting additional requirements. The complexity of implementing the new CALEA laws are a reflection of the way we communicate with the Internet. Prior to the Internet, the wire tap precedent for old phone systems was much simpler to implement. And, I suspect this simplicity played a role in the surprise confusion implementing an updated law. Historically a wire tap was just a matter of arriving at the central office with a search warrant and a tapping device, a wire splice, then listening in on a customer phone call. The transition of the law to implementation was fairly obvious…
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Photo Of The Month
 World Series of Poker – Las Vegas, Nevada
Each summer, thousands of poker players from all over the world descend on the desert oasis of Las Vegas, Nevada for the World Series of Poker. The WSOP consists of over 50 bracelet events and culminates in a Main Event that annually turns out to be the biggest tournament of the year. This picture was taken recently by a staff member who is staying in Vegas for
the summer and participating in some of the events. |
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