NetEqualizer News Blog

8.3 Release is G/A

We are very excited to announce that our 8.3 Release – Expanded RTR is now generally available!

The beta tests for the 8.3 Release have gone very well, and we are ready to release the new reporting features to everyone! Here is a comment from one of our beta customers:

“One of the things that really got my attention on the new 8.3 Release was the ability to see, in real-time, the traffic on all my subnets on one screen. I simply created a pool for all the subnets in my network, and I can instantly see the saturation in the dynamic bar charts that update once a second. I know instantly which segments are saturated by glancing at my monitor screen.”

This release expands our current reporting features to include even more useful information, graphs, and tables. Here are just a few of the new additions you’ll find in the 8.3 Release:

1) Top Talkers Report – this has been one of the most requested graphs and was a popular feature of our previous reporting tool, ntop. You can use this feature to see which IP addresses have used the most bandwidth over time.

2) General Penalty Report – we are bringing this one back from the first version of RTR! You can see both IPs that are currently being penalized, as well as a historical count of penalties that have occurred over time.

3) Connection Count Report – NetEqualizer controls P2P traffic by using connection count limits on IP addresses. However, figuring out what limit to set for your network depends on how it’s used. You can use the new Connection Count Report to see how many connections individual IP addresses have, and thus set your connection limit to the appropriate level.

You can read more about all of the features of the 8.3 Release here in the 8.3 Software Update. If you would like to upgrade to 8.3, just click on the button below to send a request to Support.

These features are free to all customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

Spring for a Lease in our End of Spring Sale

Our Leasing Program continues to be a popular choice for customers that want to use a NetEqualizer with no long-term commitment, and also want to spread out their costs over each month instead of incurring one upfront expense. If you have ever considered leasing a NetEqualizer, now is the time!

To celebrate two years of the NetEqualizer Leasing Program, all new NetEqualizer Leases started before August 31st, 2015 will get 50% off the 1st month fee.

This offer is subject to availability, and customers must qualify to participate in our Leasing Program.

We also are excited to announce that we have added fiber connectivity to our leasing program, in both the 1Gbps and 10Gbps levels. And, to provide more flexibility in financing for our larger customers, we are now offering an Enterprise-Level Lease, for customers with more than 10,000 end users.

If you are interested in learning more, you can read the details of our Leasing Program here, or contact us below.

DDoS Update

The 8.3 Release also includes our recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Monitor at no extra charge! In addition, our new DDoS Firewall tool (DFW) can be purchased as an add-on module for an additional fee.

Here are some tips from our security experts for how to handle DDoS attacks, or stop them in the first place:
• Lock out unexpected geographies – Most businesses do not need global availability for their websites.
• If an attack occurs, look for fraud – Sometimes DDoS attacks can be smokescreens for other breaches.
• Route traffic through a system like CloudFlare – Their vast network can help thwart bandwidth overloads.
• Have a plan – Build DDoS into your Disaster Recovery Plan, and know who to call when an attack occurs.

The NetEqualizer can help you have a plan.

The new DDoS Monitor, which comes standard, shows you some basic metrics on the outside intrusion hit rate into your network. It can be used to spot anomalies which would indicate a likely DDoS attack in progress.

See our detailed blog article on the subject for how this technology works. Here is a screenshot of the DDoS Monitor dashboard:

If you decide you need something more proactive to mitigate a DDoS attack, we have a solution for you! For a one time charge of $3,500, which includes one hour of training and consulting, we install our DDoS Firewall (DFW) feature, which can be configured to block standard DDoS attacks.

NetEqualizer Tech Seminars and Conferences

Our CTO, Art Reisman, will be on-site at Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania during edACCESS Vendor Day, June 24th.

If you have ever been curious about the NetEqualizer, and want to learn more, stop by to talk to Art. We also look forward to visiting with customers as well, so please come by and say hello. You might even get some free NetEqualizer bling from Art!

If you cannot attend the edACCESS conference, but are in the area of South Central Pennsylvania, and would like to meet with Art, email him at:

art@apconnections.net

Art will be in the area for a few days after the conference as well.

How do you tell if edACCESS is right for you? Their mission is to provide support and networking for information technology staff at secondary schools and small colleges. Most edACCESS members come from schools with an FTE of under 1,000 students. So, if that sounds like you, consider attending the 2015 edACCESS Conference.

If you have never been to an edACCESS Conference, you might not know that they are purposely run small (100 attendees maximum) and that they use the peer conference mode.

Here is what they say on the edACCESS website:

“Each edACCESS conference is small, responsive, and participant-driven. Small, because edACCESS conferences are limited to one hundred attendees. Responsive, because half the conference is spent discussing topics chosen by attendees through a careful first-day process. Participant-driven, because we believe that, collectively, we are the experts.”

We hope to see you there!

Best Of The Blog

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

There are many good references that explain how some applications such as VoIP are sensitive to network latency, but there is also some confusion as to what latency actually is as well as perhaps some misinformation about the causes.

In the article below, we’ll separate the facts from the myths and also provide some practical analogies to help paint a clear picture of latency and what may be behind it…