January 2015
|
|
Greetings! Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we highlight leasing a NetEqualizer with NO contract, discuss our new IPv6 shaping process, share a recent case study, and preview our 2015 price adjustments. As always, feel free to pass this along to others who might be interested in NetEqualizer News. |
|
A message from Art…
Art Reisman, CTO – APconnections
As we kick off 2015, I am knee-deep once again in architecting solutions, which many of you know is what I love to do most! It feels good to start 2015 following my passion – I hope you are committing or re-committing to spend time doing those things that you love most. Speaking of architecture, this month I share with you the upcoming IPv6 Release (8.1v6) design. I also am excited to include our latest Case Study; we have captured Lutheran Health Network’s experience with the NetEqualizer. This large-scale NetEqualizer implementation is a great read, particularly for customers with multiple sites using varying bandwidths. And finally, we give you a preview of 2015 pricing. Some good news here – we have reduced prices on two license levels! 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! |
|
In 2015, we are continuing our popular no-contract, monthly Leasing Program. This program works best for several types of customers: 1) Customers who need to align monthly expenditures with a monthly revenue stream. 2) Customers with limited budgets that need to reduce their upfront costs. 3) Customers who would like user-based pricing. Why is leasing a NetEqualizer joyful? We think that our leasing program is superior to what you would find through a typical 3rd party lessor. We keep the process simple, and make it easy for you to participate. In fact, we started this program because we were tired of the long drawn-out process full of tons of paperwork, signatures, and waiting, while trying to work with lessors on behalf of our customers. We decided that we could do this better, and we think we have! We have found this model popular, as customers can immediately get the benefits of a full-featured NetEqualizer without committing to a large upfront expenditure. And, there is no long-term commitment; if your needs change in the future, you can exit or modify your Lease Program as needed. This model works well for businesses that would like to align their shaping costs with the number of users they have on their network, rather than the size of their network pipe. In smaller businesses, this enables customers to better align their costs with their actual potential revenue stream rather than their network size. In the past several years, we have seen Schools, Business Centers and Internet Service Providers participate in our Monthly Leasing Program. If this sounds of interest to you, call us to discuss or check out our Leasing Program to see if it meets your needs! sales@apconnections.net Please note that the NetEqualizer Leasing Program is currently only available to customers in the United States and Canada. Architecting the IPv6 Release (8.1v6) We have word from a few customers running dual stacks that they do have enough IPv6 traffic that it needs to be addressed in the NetEqualizer shaper, especially during peak traffic times. Now that IPv6 is becoming a reality in many networks, I am focusing my efforts on architecting our solution, which I share here: We realized early on in our design choices that a customer running a dual stack may have two addressing schemes, but they still have one bandwidth link to shape as a whole. In other words, all the shaping decisions will be based on the total bandwidth across both sets of addresses, and not a separate decision for IPv6 and IPv4. With that decision, the easiest way to accomplish this for reporting and shaping was to trick the IPv6 traffic into an IPv4 format, which is what we are going to do. We examined real IPv6 traffic on a live network, and as expected the upper bytes in the address rarely, if ever, change. So by taking the lower 24 bits of the IPv6 address and mapping that into a locally unique IPv4 address, we can show and shape all the traffic in one table. We will have Beta versions of 8.1v6 ready to run in late February. At that time we will also have examples and documentation on how to track and shape your IPv6 traffic on the NetEqualizer. Stay tuned here to learn more about our IPv6 Release this Spring! And if you have any thoughts or input on IPv6 that you would like to share, shoot me an email at art@apconnections.net. Case Study: Lutheran Health Network Recently we received feedback from Lutheran Health Network (LHN) on how their NetEqualizer’s have helped to optimize their network infrastructure. It was so much great information that we captured it as a Case Study to share with you. Jason Whiteaker, a Senior Network Engineer at LHN, describes their environment, what challenges they faced, solutions considered, and the great results they have had with the NetEqualizer in place. Read the full Case Study here to see how the NetEqualizer has been a technical and political “win-win” for the network team. This Case Study demonstrates how the NetEqualizer works well in hub and spoke environments. To read more about how effective the NetEqualizer is at hub and spoke shaping, check out our blog article on the subject. 2015 NetEqualizer Pricing Preview As promised in last month’s newsletter, all newsletter readers can now get an advance peek of our 2015 NetEqualizer Pricing! For a limited time, you can now preview of our 2015 Pricing here without registration. You can also view the Data Sheets for each model once in the 2015 Price List. Our 2015 Pricing will be effective February 1st, 2015. Key changes for 2015: – Due to popular demand, we are adding two license levels to the NE3000 series: 500Mbps and 750 Mbps. If you are interested in user-based pricing, we are continuing to offer our Monthly Lease Program in 2015. You can read more about that in The Joy of Leasing in this month’s newsletter. We will be using 2014 pricing through January, and all current quotes using the pricing will be honored for 90 days from the date the quote was originally given. However, if you have an outstanding quote on a 100 or 150Mbps unit, we will be happy to update it for you to use the new lower pricing. We also continue to offer license upgrades on our newer NE2000’s. Remember that if you have a NE2000 purchased on or after August 2011, it is eligible for license upgrades and support. If you have an older NE2000, please contact us to discuss a trade-in. If you have questions on pricing, feel free to contact us at: sales@apconnections.net How Does Your ISP Actually Enforce Your Internet Speed?
By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections Have you ever wondered how your ISP manages to control the speed of your connection? If so, you might find the following article enlightening. Below, we’ll discuss the various trade-offs used to control and break out bandwidth rate limits and the associated side effects of using those techniques…
|
|
Photo Of The Month
 Roseate Spoonbill from Merritt Island National Seashore
The best thing NASA did besides going to the moon was preserving miles and miles of shoreline on the east coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral. The Merritt Island bird loop is better than the wild animal safari you can take over at Disneyland, alligators and exotic birds like you have never seen before.
|
 |
NetEqualizer News Blog 
Leave a Reply