NetEqualizer News: December 2014


December 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we discuss our recent K-12 Schools award, introduce IPv6 shaping for NetEqualizer, and remind everyone of 2015 pricing changes. 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 close out 2014, I smile as I think of what this year has taught me, both professionally and art_smallpersonally. Professionally, I now know that IPv6 really will be a reality in 2015, as you will read more about below. I have also learned that sometimes surprises are good – as we share with you that we received an unanticipated (but very welcome!) award from District Administration (a K-12 Schools publication) this month.

And personally, I learned that at my age I need to make sure to hydrate before a long run!

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!

We Are Honored! NetEqualizer is a K-12 School Top 100 Product in 2014

We have always known that the NetEqualizer is great (you have too!), but it is wonderful when it is validated by an independent publication. Recently we learned that we were honored in the December 2014 edition of District Administration, a publication geared to K-12 School leadership.

NetEqualizer made the 2014 list of Top 100 Products for K-12 Schools! DA_top100_2014v2

The December 2014 Cover Story is the annual Top 100 Products, viewable in the District Administration online edition. According to the article, there were 2,400 unique nominations for the Top 100 this year, up from 1,800 in 2013. Winners were selected by the editorial board based on quality and quantity of the testimonials submitted from readers.

So, a big THANK YOU to the readers that submitted us for inclusion in the Top 100! We would not have received this honor without you. We truly appreciate you taking the time to say nice things about us, especially as we rely heavily on word of mouth to get our story out to our customers. If you would like to see our listing, we are on the bottom of page 52.

As we have not advertised in this publication in the past, and did not solicit inclusion for this award in any way, this took us completely (and happily) by surprise.

As Lauren Williams of District Administration mentions in her introduction to the winners, “This annual award alerts superintendents and other senior school leaders to the best products their colleagues around the country are using to help their districts excel.”

If you have not seen the winners, take a look, you might find a product that is a good fit for your K-12 School.


2015 Pricing Coming Soon

As we close out 2014, just a reminder that we are still writing quotes using our 2014 pricing, and the quotes are good for 90 days. If you are thinking of trading-in your current NetEqualizer, upgrading your license level, or getting another NetEqualizer, now is a good time to get a quote from us.

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.

Look for a preview of our 2015 Pricing in our January Newsletter. Our 2015 Pricing will be effective February 1st, 2015.


Ready or Not, Here Comes IPv6!

Just this past month, we have seen several customers begin to see 10% or more IPV6 traffic on their networks when they turned on their IPv4/IPv6 dual stack.

As you may know, today IPv6 traffic is viewable under the Management & Reporting menus. To see any IPv6 traffic that you have on your network, select View Current Activity -> View Active Connections -> Active IPv6 Connections.

However, as IPv6 has historically been a small percentage of overall network traffic, we have not focused our engineering resources to-date on adding IPv6 shaping.

That is about to change! To address the increase in IPv6 traffic, we plan on putting out a winter release with a dual stack of our own. Our goal is to have code ready for an initial beta test in early February.

Our engineering team has come up with a cool way to handle dual address schemes. The NetEqualizer dual stack will map IPv6 addresses into unused IPv4 addresses – so that you will be able to track, shape, and equalize IPv6 on a standard NetEqualizer.

If you are interested in hearing more, please contact us:

sales@apconnections.net
-or-
303-997-1300


Best Of The Blog

Case Study: A Simple Solution to Relieve Congestion on Your MPLS Network

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

We recently installed a NetEqualizer for a national healthcare company connecting hundreds of hospitals and clinics to a central location. We were able to solve all their congestion issues on their MPLS network, while saving them tens of thousands of dollars over other solutions. The centralized NetEqualizer solution is so elegant and simple that large IT departments, who are often wined and dined by vendors with expensive WAN optimization solutions, have hard time believing that we can solve their WAN issues at a fraction of the cost. In the coming weeks, we will release a detailed case study featuring this customer.

For now, here is the original blog article that explains our spoke and hub technology…

The problem:
A customer has a hub and spoke MPLS network where remote sites get their public Internet and corporate data by coming in on a spoke to a central site. Although the network at the host site has plenty of bandwidth, the spokes have a fixed allocation over the MPLS and are experiencing contention issues (e.g. slow response times to corporate sales data, etc.)…

Photo Of The Month
235
Landon Donovan
Landon Donovan is widely considered to be the best soccer player to ever come out of the United States. He has played for multiple national and international clubs. On August 7, 2014, Donovan announced that he would be retiring at the end of the 2014 Major League Soccer season; the season ended with the Galaxy winning their fourth MLS Cup of the Donovan era on Sunday December 7, 2014. This photo was taken by one of our staff members at a game last summer.

We are Honored! NetEqualizer is a K-12 School Top 100 Product in 2014


We have always known that the NetEqualizer is great (you have too!), but it is wonderful when it is validated by an independent publication.  Today we learned that we were honored in the December 2014 edition of District Administration (http://www.districtadministration.com/), a publication geared to K-12 School leadership.

NetEqualizer made the 2014 list of Top 100 Products for K-12 Schools!

The DDA_top100_2014v2ecember 2014 Cover Story is the annual Top 100 Products, viewable here in the District Administration online article. According to the article, there were 2,400 unique nominations for the Top 100 this year, up from 1,800 in 2013.  Winners were selected by the editorial board based on quality and quantity of the testimonials submitted from readers.

So, a big THANK YOU to the readers that submitted us for inclusion in the Top 100!  We would not have received this honor without you.  We truly appreciate you taking the time to say nice things about us, especially as we rely heavily on word of mouth to get our story out to our customers.  If you would like to see our listing, we are listed under “Net Equalizer”.

As we have not advertised in this publication in the past, and did not solicit inclusion for this award in any way, this took us completely by (happy) surprise.

As Lauren Williams of District Administration mentions in her introduction to the winners, “This annual award alerts superintendents and other senior school leaders to the best products their colleagues around the country are using to help their districts excel.”  So, if you have not seen the winners, take a look, you might find a product that is a good fit for your K-12 School.

NetEqualizer News: November 2014


November 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we discuss features for our 2015 NetEqualizer Releases, announce a last call for trading in old NE2000’s and Lite units, introduce our NetEqualizer Holiday Giving Campaign, and share a technical tip on how to export data from NetEqualizer’s Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR). 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

The holiday season is almost underway in the United States. Before I get caught up in thefancy thank-you

whirlwind of activities that seems to happen at this time of year, I’d like to pause and give thanks for all the blessings in my life. As we end our 11th year, I continue to be thankful for all of our loyal customers.

THANK YOU for putting your faith and trust in APconnections, we truly appreciate your business!

APconnections also likes to give back to those in need. You can read all about our NetEqualizer Holiday Giving Campaign below.

2015 NetEqualizer Release Plans

We have started planning out our 2015 releases. We are aiming for two releases in 2015:

8.2 – Extended RTRpenalties

Our first release (8.2) will be in the late spring/early summer timeframe. We continue our commitment to robust real-time reporting (RTR) by adding reports to extend our capabilities. 8.2 – Extended RTR is currently planned to include Penalty Graphs, Bandwidth Use by IP Graphs, a Pools Dashboard, Data Export Menus, and an enhanced Active Connections Table.

8.x – Cloud Reporting

As announced in our October Newsletter, we plan to offer data storage in a cloud environment. Cloud Reporting will give you access to longer periods of data, to help with your troubleshooting, capacity planning, and trend analysis needs. Look for more information in the coming months as we start to architect our solution.

We listen to you, and have taken into account feedback provided by those of you that have upgraded to 8.1 in our release planning. As always, if you have feature requests or suggestions, please contact us!

Once 8.2 reaches GA, these features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 8.1. If you are not current with NSS, or have not upgraded to 8.1, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Last Call! Trade in Your Older NE2000 or Lite Unit

As we have announced previously in this Newsletter, we are discontinuing support for older NE2000s (any NE2000 purchased prior to August 2011) and the Lite series as of 12/31/2014.

We are moving our NE2000 and Lite license levels onto the NE3000 platform, which can support running our 64-bit software, and is better positioned for the future (more memory, more processing power, etc.).

If you have not already traded in your older NE2000 or Lite unit, we recommend that you do so at this time. As part of our Lifetime Buyer’s Guarantee, we offer a generous trade-in credit of 50% of the original unit price toward a new unit. While you will still be able to trade-in older NE2000’s and Lite units in the future, this is our Last Call because time is running out on Support (NSS) for these units.

Not sure if your NE2000 is an older unit? Call or email us and we will look it up for you.

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NetEqualizer Holiday Giving Campaign

Join APconnections in giving back to worthy causes during this holiday season. For every new NetEqualizer that our customers purchase between now and 12/31/2014, APconnections will donate $25 to one of our selected charities.

It is that simple! Just buy the NetEqualizer that you were planning to get anyway in 2015, and you get to help us to do good for others, through the great work of these deserving charities!

To keep this simple, we have selected several charities, and will split the donation amongst them. Our charities for the NetEqualizer Holiday Giving Campaign are:

1) Toys for Tots: The mission for Toys for Tots is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year, and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to less fortunate children in the community in which the campaign is conducted.

tft

2) The Hunger Project: The Hunger Project is a global, non-profit, strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger.

29DRt83

3) Doctors Without Borders: Doctors Without Borders works in nearly 70 countries providing medical aid to those most in need regardless of their race, religion, or political affiliation.

logo


Technical Tip: How to Export Your Data

Did you know there is a hidden feature in Release 8.1? Even though the menu option is not visible, it is possible to export the data in your reporting databases to csv files. You can export data for the previous 24 hours or data for the previous 4 weeks. What you do with it is up to you! Import it into Excel for easy graphing, save it locally for longer-term reporting, export data for a specific time period to analyze bandwidth-related issues, and more!export

Please note that the data is returned with Unix timestamps and is in bytes/second. Data for the 24 hour database is sampled every minute and data for the 4 week database is sampled every hour. To export your data, simply change the parameter “page” in the url to “export-data”. So, your URL would be something like:

[neteqIP]/newgui/RTR/index.php?page=export-data

If you need assistance with data export and are current on NSS, contact us at:

support@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

Please note that General Penalty Data is not available or exportable at this time.


Best Of The Blog

More Lies and Deceit From Your ISP

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Back in 2007, I wrote an article for PC Magazine about all the shenanigans that ISPs use to throttle bandwidth. The article set a record for online comments for one day, and the editor was happy. I recall, at that time, I felt like a lone wolf trying to point out these practices. Finally some redemption, this morning, the FTC is flexing it’s muscle and is now taking on AT&T for false claims with respect to unlimited data…

Photo Of The Month
santa
Interactive Robotic Santa
One of our staff members’ recently stumbled upon an Internet-controllable robotic Santa in his neighborhood. The Santa is viewable via web cam and can speak text entered into the website. It can also play music and dance. Santa was relatively quiet until recently when the URL went viral and Santa was speaking non-stop! Email us for a link to check out the Santacam – but beware that Santa has a gift for gab and no content filter.

NetEqualizer News: October 2014


October 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we discuss more details of our upcoming Cloud Reporting offering, highlight two ways to learn more about the NetEqualizer, and preview our new NetEqualizer 8.1 Product Demo Guide. 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

October in Colorado has been mild to date. This year, I received an early “Halloween treat” – my garden pumpkin plants are still producing baby pumpkins! Normally by this time everything has been killed off by frost – but not this year.art_canoe_picture

We have a Halloween treat for you as well this month. Due to popular demand and very positive feedback, we are continuing to offer our “Tech Refresh” sessions. For those of you looking for a more extensive training, we are also offering On-Site One Day Training Sessions – see below for details on each of these offerings.

We love it when we hear back from you – so let us know what you think of the new RTR! Email me directly at art@apconnections.net. I would love to hear from you!

Here Comes The Cloud!

Have you had a chance to play with our Release 8.1 reporting features yet? There are some nice traffic graphs and other tools to help you find out what has been happening on your network. If you have not already upgraded to 8.1, contact our Support Team at support@apconnections.net to get current today!

tbyip

We are now planning for our 8.2 Release. As always, if you have RTR feedback or other feature requests for 8.2, please email your thoughts to sales@apconnections.net.

Our 8.2 development focus will be centered on long-term data resolution. Data resolution, or the granularity for which you can drill down on historical data in reporting, is based on three factors:

1. Sample rate
2. Length of time you store data
3. Amount of storage available

As you can imagine, the three factors above are interrelated. In order to increase our storage out to a year or more, there are two options. One would be to install larger disk drives on systems. The second option would be to take advantage of the cloud, where storage is essentially infinite and access to the data is fast.

We are choosing the latter option, for the same reasons the rest of the world is moving away from local data storage. We are planning on having NetEqualizer Cloud Reporting (NCR) ready to go by the summer of 2015, with beta trials this spring.

It will be easy to set up with a few clicks, and will be a cost-effective option for keeping NetEqualizer data long-term. Please note that you must be on Release 8.1+ to take advantage of our NetEqualizer Cloud Reporting (NCR).

If you have questions on the above, please don’t hesitate to contact us:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NetEqualizer 8.1 Product Demo GuideScreenshot at Oct 19 16-57-23

Our Product Demonstration Guide has been updated to highlight the new reporting capabilities available in 8.1.

Click here to get the updated guide, which you can use to review key features and functions of the NetEqualizer.

The Product Demo Guide is a great self-guided introduction to the NetEqualizer. If you have new staff members that could benefit from a quick tutorial, I highly recommend giving them this updated guide!

The Product Demo Guide is also available as part of our Online Demo Site. Register here to go to the NetEqualizer demonstration site and use the updated guide for a self-guided tour.


Schedule a Tech Refresh Call

We mentioned this offer in last month’s newsletter as well, but due to popular demand, we are highlighting this again for those of you who missed it last month!

We want to make sure that you are getting the most out of your NetEqualizer, as we are sure you do too! For customers that have been using the NetEqualizer awhile, sometimes with staffing changes over the years, and our new software releases, your collective NetEqualizer know-how diminishes. We would like to help you quickly get up-to-speed on all the features & functions of the NetEqualizer that are new to you, or you might have forgotten.

For customers current on NetEqualizer Software and Support (NSS), we would be happy to schedule up to a 1 hour NetEqualizer “Tech Refresh” call with you and your team. We will set up a webex session to screen-share with you, and walk through the NetEqualizer technology.

Call or email us to schedule your Tech Refresh today:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Want More? On-Site Technical Training

While a Tech Refresh call is a great way to get current on all things NetEqualizer, some of you have expressed an interest in even more!

So, we are now offering a limited number of On-Site One Day Technical Training Sessions in the U.S. and Canada, subject to availability.

Our one day training is great if you would like an engineer to train your team at your location, working directly on your NetEqualizer(s). We can highlight key configuration options, assess your set-up, and help you to review your environment in detail.

Pricing is $3500 USD for one day, plus travel expenses.

Call or email to check availability for On-Site Technical Training today:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Best Of The Blog

QoS Over The Internet – Five Must-Know Facts

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Twelve years ago we crossed a chasm with our NetEqualizer technology. We found a new and completely novel way to provide QoS without controlling both ends of the connection. In other words we are still the only solution that I know of that can sit in your enterprise and ensure that an incoming VoIP call over your public facing Internet connection does not get drowned out from an incoming download.

There is no doubt that we do it well because every month I talk to a customer that thanks us for helping solve this problem. If you do get into a water cooler discussion with other IT people on this subject, please send them this link from a blog post where I explain this technology and how it is different, you will be doing them a favor.

Photo Of The Month
IMG_0598
Great Horned Owl
The great horned owl is one of the most beautiful birds in the Americas. This particular owl spends his time in Lafayette, CO in a staff member’s backyard. Due to its natural-colored plumage, it can successfully adapt to most environments.

NetEqualizer News: September 2014


September 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we dedicate the newsletter to our new Enhanced Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR), which is now generally available! 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

September is the start of the harvest season, and this year once again we are ready with a new release at harvest time. Along with my giant pumpkins (see picture below), we think you will agree that our 8.1 Release – Enhanced Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR) is also a bountiful harvest. Our Enhanced Dynamic RTR is easy to use, but in case you need guidance, we have also updated our User Guide. art_canoe_picture

I am excited to say that our reporting now offers four weeks of historical data. I now feel that it rivals (and exceeds) what we offered via our 3rd party reporting tool, ntop. Thus, it is time to sunset ntop. So as of 8.1, you will no longer see ntop in our GUI.

Finally, if you would like a walk through on our new reporting, to help you get up-to-speed on all the features that we offer, call or email and ask for a “Tech Refresh” call with us.

We love it when we hear back from you – so let us know what you think of the new RTR! Email me directly at art@apconnections.net. I would love to hear from you!

8.1 Release is Generally Available!

8.1 adds exciting features to our Dynamic Real-Time Reports, including the ability to graphically view traffic at this moment and up to a four week period. We have also expanded your view to include the ability to graph by selected Pools, IP addresses, subnets, VLANs, along with your entire network. And, you can see all of this in the units that make the most sense for you (Mbps, MBps, Kbps, KBps). We have also added the NetEqualizer Log and Active Connections into our RTR Menu, to give you access to everything you need from one convenient place.

You can use 8.1 key features on your network to:

If this sounds interesting to you, and you would like to upgrade to 8.1, please contact our Support Team to get started! You can reach Support at:

support@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300 x102

Please note that as of this release we are officially deprecating ntop. The new RTR tool provides much of the core ntop functionality without all the processing overhead.

Also, some features discussed in previous newsletters such as Penalty Reporting will be released in a future offering, along with a more interactive Dashboard. Protocol Tracking is still available as an experimental offering. Please contact us at the email above if you are interested in enabling this feature.

These features are free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.5+. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NetEqualizer 8.1 User Guide

Our User Guide has been updated to highlight the new reporting capabilities available in 8.1. Check it out here.

You can read all about Dynamic RTR under the Monitoring and Reporting section, starting on page 44. With the embedded screenshots, we think this guide is a nice way to see what the new reporting release offers.

If you have not checked out our User Guide in awhile, you can also take a look at other sections that cover advanced configuration, such as Redundancy & Failover and our Appendices.


Schedule a Tech Refresh Call

We want to make sure that you are getting the most out of your NetEqualizer, as we are sure you do too! For customers that have been using the NetEqualizer awhile, sometimes with staffing changes over the years, and our new software releases, your collective “NetEqualizer know-how” diminishes.

We would like to help you quickly get up-to-speed on all the features & functions of the NetEqualizer that are new to you, or you might have forgotten.

For customers current on NetEqualizer Software and Support (NSS), we would be happy to schedule up to a 1 hour NetEqualizer “Tech Refresh” call with you and your team.

We will set up a webex session to screen-share with you, and walk through the NetEqualizer technology, both old and new.

Contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

if you are interested in a “Tech Refresh.”


Best Of The Blog

Surviving iOS Updates

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

The birds outside my office window are restless. I can see the strain in the Comcast cable wires as they droop, heavy with the burden of additional bits, weighing them down like a freak ice storm. It is time, once again, for Apple to update every device in the Universe with their latest iOS update.

Assuming you are responsible for a Network with a limited Internet pipe, and you are staring down 100 or more users, about to hit the accept button for their update, what can you do to prevent your user network from being gridlocked…

Photo Of The Month
IMG_0399
Pumpkins!
Giant pumpkins like the one above are a Colorado staple in the fall. You see them all over town – on porches for decorations, carved into Jack-O’-Lanterns, or made into delicious pies.
Posted in Newsletters. Tags: . 1 Comment »

NetEqualizer News: July 2014


July 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we give you an old school NetEqualizer tip, discuss our Hotel and Resorts offerings, and announce our FlyAway Contest winner. 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

Every summer I try to camp at least once in a National Park. Living in Boulder, Colorado, I am closest to Rocky Mountain National Park, and so that is an easy destination. Over the 4th of July holiday weekend, I spent a night camping there.art_canoe_picture

I could not really get cell or Internet service in the park boundaries. However, I understand that our friends at Global Gossip are working to pull a link up to the busy shop and restaurant on top of trail ridge road at this time. The good news is many of the other National Parks out in the west are supported by Global Gossip and a NetEqualizer system to boost service in their lodging and services area.

This month we profile Sam Beskur of Global Gossip. Over the last 3 years, Global Gossip has rolled out NetEqualizers to campsites and resorts at many U.S. National Parks, including Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, Death Valley and Mount Rushmore National Memorial and coming soon to Yosemite

Maybe next year Rocky Mountain National Park will have a NetEqualizer. Otherwise, I am in for a road trip!

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@netequalizer.com. I would love to hear from you!

Old School NetEqualizer Tip – Keeping Track of Total Usage Per Device by MAC Address

Because our 8.1 Release with the updated graphing and longer-term reporting is not quite ready for release, we won’t do another teaser on this release – we did that last month.

So in keeping with that promise, whatever you do, don’t click on these links below, because it will just make you envious of what is coming out next month…

1) General traffic through the device:

http://prntscr.com/3y0br9

2) Traffic reports for an IP address:

http://prntscr.com/40hvql

http://prntscr.com/40hvzz

So instead of showing off the report graphics for the new release (assuming you did not click any of those links), we have decided to go back in time, back to our open source days, and re-visit the days when I would release cool back door tricks for enhancing your NetEqualizer. This month we offer a script, for all our early adopters to enjoy!

Note: this script is for those who like to get their hands dirty. It is not officially supported under NSS.

For those of you that would like to keep track of total usage per visible device – you can now do that! My Total Usage by MAC address Script can be adapted to do this in your environment.Just save the script to a file, make it executable, and start it up. The script keeps track of total byte counts for all visible MAC addresses.

Once Release 8.1 reaches GA, these features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.5+. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Spotlight: HMSIO and Sam Beskur of Global Gossip

This month we profile Sam Beskur of Global Gossip, and our joint offering, which we first introduced last summer, the Hotel Management System Integrated Offering (HMSIO).

Global Gossip has been developing network and communication solutions since 1999 and currently manages and maintains over 300 wired and wireless access networks globally. Their locations span seven countries, and include remote and bandwidth challenged sites, such as the central Australian desert! Global Gossip has offices in Denver, Colorado; Sydney, Australia; and London, England.

Sam is Director and Senior Software Engineer at Global Gossip, which basically means that he can (and does) get involved in designing network architectures and implementation efforts. In addition, Sam heads up Global Gossip’s North American Operations. Sam has been with Global Gossip for over 10 years, with stints both in Australia (their home office) and the U.S.

Sam found NetEqualizer over 3 years ago. Once Sam saw how equalizing helped to resolve congestion issues at his initial site, he spearheaded rolling out NetEqualizers as part of their network architecture for all new implementations.

It has been a whirlwind since then – the NetEqualizer is at campsites and resorts at many U.S. National Parks, including Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, Death Valley, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, and (coming soon!) to Yosemite.

Global Gossip has deep experience delivering guest Internet solutions including full property management system integration to some of the leading hospitality providers worldwide. They have established a strong partnership with Xanterra in the US, rolling out full Wireless Internet solutions to more than 2000 rooms and 4000 staff in the hotels and resorts within Yellowstone National Park, Death Valley and the Grand Canyon.

Last summer we partnered with Global Gossip to roll out our Hotel Management System Integrated Offering (HMSIO), which gives our lodging customers the opportunity to benefit from Global Gossip’s expertise.

If you would like to learn more about HMSIO, contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NetEqualizer Summary Guide for Hotels and Resorts

Summer is high season to take a vacation, and relax at a nice hotel or fancy resort. So, we thought it was the perfect time to update our Hotels & Resorts Guide! If you are in the hospitality industry and are considering a NetEqualizer, you may want to review our updated guide.unnamed1unnamed

This short guide is focused on issues specific to the hospitality industry and explains how the NetEqualizer is used by our hotel and resort customers to address these common issues.

This is a quick way to learn about how the NetEqualizer might apply to your environment.

And if you would like to outsource your Internet offering to a network managed services provider, you may also want to check out our Hotel Management System Integrated Offering (HMSIO), which is offered jointly with Global Gossip, profiled above in this newsletter.

If you are a current hospitality industry customer, this guide and is a great read to optimize your NetEqualizer configuration. Take a look to see if there are features that you might not be using and want to take advantage of in your NetEqualizer installation.

We would be happy to help you with your configuration. If you are current on NetEqualizer Software and Support, contact:

support@apconnections.net

to get help optimizing your NetEqualizer.


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.40

And the winner is…

Mark Parry at Wifinity!

Congratulations, Mark!

Please contact us within 30 days (by August 22, 2014) at:

admin@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

to claim your prize!


Best Of The Blog

QoS over the Internet – Is it Possible? Five Must-Know Facts

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

I had an inquiry from a potential customer yesterday asking if we could monitor their QoS. I was a bit miffed as to what to tell them. At first, the question struck me as if they’d asked if we can monitor electrons on their power grid. In other words, it was a legitimate question in a sense, but of what use would it be to monitor QoS? I then asked him why he had implemented QoS in the first place. How did he know he needed it…

Photo Of The Month
 IMG_0438
Moose at Rocky Mountain National Park
During Art’s holiday trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, he spotted this moose running through his camp! He was able to snag a pretty good picture of these amazing animals.

NetEqualizer News: June 2014


June 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we preview our exciting Release 8.1 (Enhanced RTR), highlight one of our resellers in South Africa (Cybersmart), and show off our updated Libraries Guide. As always, feel free to pass this along to others who might be interested in NetEqualizer News.

A message from Zack…
Zack Sanders, Network Engineer – APconnections

 

On Memorial Day (May 26th this year), 50,000 people descend upon Boulder, Colorado to run the BolderBoulder 10K race. Anyone can run the race, and some walk it as well. However, to get your best times (a PR, or “personal record”), I find that I need to develop a training plan and start training about two months before the race. This is always a big commitment for me mentally and physically, but I find it pays off in the end. This year I ran in 53 minutes, beating my goal time by 1 minute.  303809_10100390274244183_885235222_n

As an engineer on our Dynamic Real-Time Reporting tool, I find that I use this same skill to plan & execute my development work. I am happy to say that our Release 8.1 (Enhanced RTR) is on track for a late summer/early fall roll-out. You will see some of the initial screenshots below. We are very excited with how it is turning out.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 zack@netequalizer.com. I would love to hear from you!

Sneak Peek at Release 8.1 (Enhanced RTR)

We are very excited to announce Release 8.1 (Enhanced RTR) – coming in late summer/early fall of this year! This release is special because it includes a new version of our popular Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR) tool. The original RTR provided some basic functionality and served as a test to discover what our customers truly needed in a reporting feature. You gave us feedback, and we listened!

The new RTR tool enhances the features and capabilities of the existing RTR in many ways. Here are just a few:

1) New and improved graphing: We’ve added things like timestamps to the graph’s x-axis, a smart down-sampler in order to quickly graph up to 4 weeks of data, and the ability to show both upload and download bandwidth usage on the same graph.

2) Improved menu design with new graphs: We’ve created a new user interface with more intuitive pages and the ability to graph more data. For example, with the new RTR tool, you can graph bandwidth usage for individual IP addresses, subnets, pools, and VLAN’s.

3) Penalty graphs over time: We have a new graph which shows the number of penalties over time – allowing you to correlate bandwidth trends with penalties.

Over the next two months, we’ll be stress and load testing this tool to ensure seamless integration with your network and NetEqualizer. Stay tuned to NetEqualizer News for updates on this release!

Once Release 8.1 reaches GA, these features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.5+. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Spotlight: Our South African Reseller, Cybersmart

Deep in the heart of Cape Town, South Africa resides the offices of Cybersmart – a company that supplies bandwidth circuits to cities and towns all over the country, ultimately serving tens of thousands of South African citizens. Some of these customers are wireless Internet service providers in remote regions, where bandwidth is still quite expensive.unnamed

Several years ago, they deployed a NetEqualizer on one of  their regional circuits, and at once became true believers in the elegance of the NetEqualizer philosophy and technology. Not only are they our customer, but they have also become our regional distributor in South Africa and neighboring countries – supporting and reselling equipment to regional ISPs and businesses. So, if you are ever in need of a bandwidth circuit, or a NetEqualizer in their region, please give them a call!

In April 2012, Managing Director Laurie Fialkov of Cybersmart issued a press release about its new uncapped ADSL product, which relied on the NetEqualizer as a backbone of its offering.

Portions of the press release are included here:
…The solution which provides Cybersmart with what it needs is a product called NetEqualizer. We were so impressed that we asked for distribution rights for South Africa, which was granted to us,” said Fialkov.

The way this product works, is it keeps track of the top TCP connections on a network. The NetEqualizer rates the connections based on how long the connection has been alive and how fast it is going. It will then slow the ‘top’ connections down so they are not unfairly using the bandwidth,” explains Fialkov. This solution means that business applications which use encryption are not arbitrarily slowed down (as is the case with many shaping solutions).

Fialkov added that the TCP rules will only be enforced during times when the network load is high. “If we are not under peak load then no connections are equalized at all,” said Fialkov.

Fialkov explained that, to be competitive, all ISPs need to oversell bandwidth to end-users – also known as contending bandwidth. What this means is that a certain number of users need to share the same bandwidth. “We are planning on overselling our uncapped product at 15:1 to 20:1, which we believe is a lot better than the current products in the market,” said Fialkov.

Fialkov then pointed out that automatic shaping via the NetEqualizer has ensured a good experience on uncapped accounts.

Cybersmart continues to use their NetEqualizer today, and has sold units across South Africa since mid-2012, based on their success implementing the NetEqualizer in their own business.

If you are in South Africa, and would like to learn more about the NetEqualizer, contact:

Laurie Fialkov at Cybersmart laurie@cybersmart.co.za


NetEqualizer Summary Guide for Libraries

This month we have updated our Libraries Guide. If you are a library and are considering a NetEqualizer, you may want to review our updated guide.unnamed

This short guide is focused on issues specific to Libraries and explains how the NetEqualizer is used by our library customers to address these common issues. This is a quick way to learn about how the NetEqualizer might apply to your environment.

And if you like real-life examples, you may also want to check out our Library Case Study with Washington County Cooperative Library Services. While the write-up is from 2012, the case study is still relevant today.

If you are a current library customer, this guide and case study are a great read to optimize your NetEqualizer configuration.

Take a look to see if there are features that you might not be using and want to take advantage of in your NetEqualizer installation. We would be happy to help you with your configuration.

If you are current on NSS, contact support@apconnections.net to get help optimizing your NetEqualizer.


Best Of The Blog

Is Your Bandwidth Controller Obsolete Technology?

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Although not free yet, bandwidth contracts have been dropping in cost faster than a bad stock during a recession. With cheaper bandwidth costs, the question often arises on whether or not an enterprise can do without their trusty bandwidth controller.

Below, we have compiled a list of factors that will determine whether or not bandwidth controllers stick around for a while, or go the route of the analog modem, a relic of when people received their Internet From AOL and dial up…

Photo Of The Month
unnamed
Las Vegas Trail Running
Mountain trails are usually not the first thing to come to mind when one thinks about Las Vegas. Though the area is primarily known for gambling and world-class restaurants (among other things), the mountains surrounding the city offer an excellent escape from the concrete jungle and lights. This picture was recently taken on the summit of one of the small hills surrounding the Southern Highlands neighborhood south of The Strip. It was unclear why the flag exists on top.

NetEqualizer News: May 2014


May 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we preview our new NetEqualizer Cloud Reporting feature, show off our new Internet Providers Guide, and highlight one of our international resellers – Reinaldo Neilla. 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

I must admit that my head has been in the clouds a lot lately, as I like to bird watch, and the spring migrations are in full swing here in Colorado. I saw two “life birds” this spring (a life bird is the first time you see a bird in the wild) – the Common Yellowthroat Warbler (not common in my part of Colorado!) and a Lesser Goldfinch (only a tiny slice of its range is in Boulder).art_small

I guess staring at all those clouds gave me an idea, which I share with you this month in more detail below. In a nutshell, we can use the cloud to help store longer periods of data for reporting. Read more about our upcoming NetEqualizer Cloud Reporting offering below.

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@netequalizer.com. I would love to hear from you!

NetEqualizer Cloud Reporting

Coming this July, we will offer the ability to store up to one year of reporting data from our Dynamic Real-Time Reports onto a cloud server. The benefits will be numerous, as it will be complete turn key access to historical usage at the touch of button.

For example, if you want to know what your usage data looked like for the same month last year, you can pull it up instantly.

graph

To get started, the requirements will be fairly simple:

1) Your NetEqualizer must have access to the Internet (our cloud server).
2) You must sign up for an account with us. There will be a yearly charge for this service:
– $1,000 for small installations (<= 300 users) – $2,000 for medium installations (> 300 users, <= 1000 users) – $3,000 for large installations (> 1000 users)

Retrieval will be as easy as providing a date range, and IP or subnet. In version 1.0, all usage will be IP based.

We will also include reports for system protocol usage (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) depending on demand for this information in coming releases.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NetEqualizer Summary Guide for Internet Providers

This month we have updated our Internet Providers Guide. If you are a telecommunications, satellite systems, cable, or wireless/wired Internet Services Provider (ISP), and are considering a NetEqualizer, you may want to review our updated Internet Providers Guide.isp_wp

This summary guide (2-3 pages) is focused on issues specific to Internet Providers, and explains how the NetEqualizer is used by our customers to address these common issues. This is a quick way to learn about how the NetEqualizer might apply to your environment.

If you are a current customer, these guides are a great read to optimize your NetEqualizer configuration. Take a look to see if there are features that you might not be using and want to take advantage of in your NetEqualizer installation. We would be happy to help you with your configuration.

If you are current on NetEqualizer Software and Support (NSS), contact:

support@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

to get help optimizing your NetEqualizer.


Spotlight: Our South American Reseller, Reinaldo Neilla

As many of our customers know, we sell directly to businesses in most geographies, particularly the U.S. and Canada. However, in some areas of the world, we work with reseller organizations. Many of these international resellers started as our customers, loved our product, and asked to get involved in building out the marketplace in their country.

We find that our international resellers are great at navigating customs requirements, communicating in local languages, and sharing their technical knowledge of the NetEqualizer.

This month we profile one of them, Telefonia Publica y Privada S.A. (TPP S.A.). TPP is an Argentinian WISP with over 30,000 broadband users in different cities in the interior of Argentina (growing at a rate of 450 per month). Reinaldo Neilla of TPP has been using a NetEqualizer for his business since July 2008.

According to Reinaldo, “the NetEqualizer helps us (TPP) to automatically and economically provide flow control for our customers. We converted from an Allot NetEnforcer and have never looked back.”

TPP represents NetEqualizer to customers in South America. If you are in South America, and would like to talk to or email Reinaldo, you can find his contact information on our web page, here:

NetEqualizer TPP Profile


Home Networking Tip

We often have networking tutorials in our blog – but not all of them are for enterprise networks. Recently, our Co-Founder, Steve Wagor, wrote a how-to on improving wireless dead spots in your home and setting up wireless home music. Check it out!


Best Of The Blog

Why Does Fear Sell over Value for IT?

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

When Willie Sutton was asked, why do you rob Banks? He replied, “Because that is where the money is.”

Why do companies sell fear? Ask Willie Sutton. :)

From Y2K and ozone holes, to IP4 address space, sales channels love a good crises to drive a sale. The funny thing is, from my experience, the process of adjusting a product line to accommodate customer fear is evolutionary, akin to natural selection, and not a preplanned conspiracy. Demand seems to be created from some external uncontrolled upwelling, and not from a hard sell within the vendor ranks…

Photo Of The Month

IMG_0040

Common Yellowthroat Warbler
Common Yellowthroats are small songbirds that have olive backs, wings and tails, yellow throats and chests, and white bellies. Adult males have black face masks which stretch from the sides of the neck across the eyes and forehead, which are bordered above with white or gray. Females are similar in appearance, but have paler underparts and lack the black mask. These birds are on the move this time of year through Colorado.

NetEqualizer News: April 2014


April 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we preview our summer release (8.1), ask for your help in selecting a technical seminar location, discuss our popular leasing program, and show off our brief guides for how we can help in the education space (both K-12 and Higher Education). As always, feel free to pass this along to others who might be interested in NetEqualizer News.

A message from Steve…
Steve Wagor, Co-Founder – APconnections

Colorado offers some great sights, and I prefer to see them riding a Harley. Riding here and trying to push the first day and last day of what we call the “riding season” further apart can be IMG_0069challenging. Last weekend’s ride started in the 40’s and then when it headed into the mountains, the temperature dropped into the 30’s. This required going through a small snow storm for 15 miles or so, and then rain the last 7 miles. But, you don’t ride a motorcycle unless you are willing to put up with a little of what Mother Nature can dump on you!

With the temperatures rising in Colorado (giving me more opportunities to ride), things are also heating up at APconnections. We have some exciting things planned for NetEqualizer this summer and beyond. Stay tuned to the newsletter in the coming months for more details.

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 stevew@apconnections.net. I would love to hear from you!

Our Summer Release (8.1) is Heating Up!

The response to Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR) has been very positive, so we are spending resources this spring extending and enhancing its capabilities. We are excited to announce several key enhancements to RTR.

First, we are ready to support your need for long-term data storage. To do this, we are implementing an easy-to-use data export process. You will be able to export reporting history to your reports data warehouse.  This will enable you to slice and dice months or years worth of data on an external server.

Second, we are expanding our ability to track and graph bandwidth use for your IP addresses. In addition to being able to track and graph by IP and your entire network, as you can today in 7.5, we are adding tracking and graphing by subnet, Pools, and VLANs. This addition will give you even more visibility to your traffic, with the added context and meaning specific to your network environment. Behind the scenes, we are enhancing our storage architecture to enable us to quickly drill-up and down all levels of IP data.

totaltraffic

The way we track penalties will be enhanced as well. You’ll be able to see in graphical format how a particular IP has been penalized over time.

This is all in an effort to replicate the most heavily used features of ntop into our own tool with the goal of replacing ntop with RTR by 2015.

Once our 8.1 reaches G/A (we are anticipating July/August 2014), these features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.5. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Wanted: Summer 2014 Technical Seminar Location

We are looking for a host for our next Technical Seminar!

Our popular technical seminar brings our CTO, Art Reisman, directly to you. Art will explore the NetEqualizer technology in detail and can answer all of your technical questions. Art is a futurist and successful entrepreneur, and can delve into diverse topics such as business ownership and technology direction, along with bandwidth shaping and caching.

This is also a great opportunity to meet other NetEqualizer customers in your area. This half-day session is held as a casual, user-group format. This is not a marketing presentation; it was created by techies, for techies!

You would be a great candidate to host the Summer Technical Seminar if…neteq seminar logo with border

  • You would like to spend half a day with Art Reisman, our CTO.
  • You have a NetEqualizer that Art can log into during the seminar to review your setup.
  • You have a room to fit up to 20 attendees.
  • You can help to coordinate logistics (room, directions, etc.).

Possible locations are not limited to the United States and anyone across the world willing to have this half day event should not hesitate to contact us:logo-270x231

sandy@apconnections.netWashington University in St Louis

-or-

303-997-1300 x104gordon_college

Previous locations for the technical seminar include:
Washington University – St. Louis
Western Michigan
Gordon College
and more!


Think You Cannot Afford a NetEqualizer? Consider a Lease!

Last summer, we announced our new NetEqualizer Leasing Program, and since then, we have seen a great adoption rate. This program works best for those customers who need to align monthly expenditures with a monthly revenue steam – models commonly used by Business Centers and Internet Service Providers (for example). If you are a business owner in either of these verticals (or any other industry that could benefit), you should check out our Leasing Program to see if it meets your needs!

Please note that the NetEqualizer Leasing Program is currently only available to customers in the United States and Canada.

If you have questions about this program, contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NetEqualizer in a Nutshell: Summary Guides for Educationunnamed

If you are a K-12 School, College, or University considering a NetEqualizer, you may want to review our updated guides:

K-12 Schools Guide
-or-
College & University Guide

These summary guides (3-4 pages) are focused on issues specific to schools and colleges, and explain how the NetEqualizer is used by our customers to address these common issues. This is a quick way to learn about how the NetEqualizer might apply to your environment.

If you are a current customer, these guides are a great read to optimize your NetEqualizer configuration. Take a look to see if there are features that you might not be using and want to take advantage of in your NetEqualizer installation. We would be happy to help you with your configuration. If you are current on NSS, contact:

support@apconnections.net

to get help optimizing your NetEqualizer.


Best Of The Blog

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Headwinds of Change

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

For anybody who has ever done something innovative, you’ll find most technology advances require some sort of change in behavior on the part of the target customer (consumer or business). The larger the organization, the less likely they are to embrace that change, and many times they are downright hostile toward change.

I attended an entrepreneur group last month where a company is going to market with a smart Window that changes reflectivity with outside temperature. The demand and value for this product clearly distinguish it as cost-savings winner, and yet, because of entrenched ideas about smart windows, it has been a 12-year battle of sacrifice and pain for founder Wil McCarthy to get his product to market…

Photo Of The Month

IMG_1022

Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo
Nestled in the hills behind Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo, is a sculpture garden to rival any modern art museum in the world. It actually appears to be more of a sculpture graveyard, filled with architecture student projects erected over the years that have been abandoned. Nevertheless, it’s a mysterious location worth visiting if you are ever in the area.

NetEqualizer News: March 2014


March 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we discuss our summer release and 8.0 Beta progress, as well as announce our FlyAway Contest winner and revisit a classic NetEqualizer whitepaper. 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

This past month I have had the pleasure of working with some of you installing our 8.0 Beta – Protocol art_canoe_pictureTracking – release on your NetEqualizers. It has been fun seeing protocol tracking in action, and I have been humbled by the positive feedback. Thanks to all of you for working with me on this project. I truly appreciate your willingness to be Beta host sites – thank you!

Speaking of the Beta, you can read more about our plan for protocol tracking below, along with our planned summer release! I am just getting used to the fact that it is almost spring, and here comes summer…

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!

2014 Real-Time Reporting (RTR) Summer Release

Many of you have noticed and thanked us for our investment over the last year in reporting within the NetEqualizer toolset. In 2014, we have made it a goal to completely replace ntop reports within NetEqualizer with Dynamic RTR.

To do this, we have several key features that we are working on for a summer release:

1) Increase our traffic graphs time frame to display up to 1 week of data.
2) Change the time displayed to show time of day.
3) Enable you to automatically dump data to a separate server for longer periods of analysis.

In addition to these key features, we plan to beef up our Pools reporting, by adding Pool and VLAN traffic graphs. This will enable you to see the upload and download usage over time for your defined Pools and VLANs. We will also graph penalties over time (for a selected IP, Pool, or the network as a whole), so that you can see how often your network traffic is being equalized.

totaltraffic

We plan to convert all remaining “Current Activity” reports into RTR reports, including the NetEqualizer Log. Now you will be able to sort, search, and view the log in a much more usable manner.

Finally, our protocol tracking reports will officially be generally available (G/A) in our summer release. You can read more about this in the article below.

RTR_Protocol_Tracking_One_IP_Pie2

While ntop will remain on the GUI interface through 2014, we expect to remove it in early 2015. So if you have not already starting using RTR, please put it on your list to look at in 2014 or ask us for a demo.

Once our summer release reaches G/A, these features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.5. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Protocol Tracking: Update on 8.0 Beta

In our February Newsletter, we announced our Beta Release of Protocol Tracking reports.

Since then, we have installed the 8.0 Beta at multiple customer sites, and have received positive feedback. We now consider 8.0 to be stable, and it is working well. However, as we do not want to cause “release exhaustion”, we have decided to roll the protocol tracking into our summer release for our official G/A.

We know that it takes some time out of your schedule each time we offer a release, and we are deferring this to minimize disruption for our customers.

However, if you cannot wait until summer for protocol tracking, we are happy to offer the 8.0 code to anyone current on NSS running version 7.5+. Just email or call support to request 8.0.

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Comparison Paper: A Classic Revisited

If it has been some time since you have read our classic white paper, Equalizing Compared to Application Shaping, you are in for a treat!

We have just updated and revised it, to make it more readable and relevant to today’s networks.

This is a must read if you ever get asked, “What makes the NetEqualizer different and better than other devices?” Or, you can pass it along to your boss, colleagues, and others that might want to learn more about behavior-based shaping technology.

Take a look at the new whitepaper here.

And, if you have questions, feel free to contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


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.40

The time has come to announce this round’s winner.

And the winner is…

Scott Coughlin at ValueOptions!

Congratulations, Scott!

Please contact us within 30 days (by April 18, 2014) at:

admin@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

to claim your prize!


Best Of The Blog

Federal Judge Orders Internet Name be Changed to CDSFBB (Content Delivery Service For Big Business)

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Okay, so I fabricated that headline, it’s not true, but I hope it goes viral and sends a message that our public Internet is being threatened by business interests and activist judges.

I’ll concede our government does serve us well in some cases;  they have produced some things that could not be done without their oversight, for example:

1) The highway system

2) The FAA does a pretty good job keeping us safe

3) The Internet. At least up until some derelict court ruling that will allow ISPs to give preferential treatment to content providers for a payment (bribe), whatever you want to call it.

The ramifications of this ruling may bring an end to the Internet as we know it…

Photo Of The Month

Tom’s Thumb
Because we live near the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, hiking is in our blood. Given our natural interest in the activity, it’s also fun to hike in other parts of the country and the world. This picture was taken at the summit of Tom’s Thumb in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve near Phoenix, Arizona. Though not nearly as high as Colorado peaks, the trail was arduous and offered a great view at the top.

NetEqualizer News: February 2014


February 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we preview our new Software Update 8.0 Beta (which includes Protocol Tracking reports), as well as our new Mogicho licensed movie content service for customers with our caching option, and lastly we remind you about our NetEqualizer trade-in policy. 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 move into February, we have been glued to the TV watching the Olympic games – well, actually glued to “on demand” video replays on our iPads and laptops. We love that there are no commercials and that we can watch whenever we want! If you find yourself doing the same, you will not be surprised that more and more customers mention that video is a huge percentage of their Internet traffic.
art_canoe_picture
We recognize this trend, and are working on this in several areas. This month we talk about our new Protocol Tracking reports, which will help you to make sense of all the video on your network. Also, as I mentioned last month, I am working on partnerships with the movie industry. We call this offering “Mogicho”, and you can read more about it below. 2014 begins, we are excited to see what the year brings. In the United States, the economy is finally improving, at least when measured by job creation, stock market growth, and real estate sales. Hopefully, this trend continues, as we are ready for the Great Recession to be officially over! We hope that you are seeing an improving economy in your part of the world too.

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!

Software Update 8.0 Beta: Protocol Tracking Reports

We are excited to announce the 8.0 Beta Release for NetEqualizer where we introduce Protocol Tracking reports!

Protocol Tracking reports extend our Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR) – Traffic Reporting capabilities. Through Protocol Tracking, we enable you track various Internet protocols (Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, Pandora, etc.) and then view these protocols and bandwidth usage for an IP or your entire network in a pie or bar chart format.

s1

We built our RTR tool last year, and based on the feedback that we received, we have continued our investment in visibility and reporting in 2014. As many of you note that you need to better understand how much video is on your network, and what types of traffic are consuming your bandwidth, we felt that the time was right for Protocol Tracking reports.

RTR_Protocol_Tracking_One_IP_Pie2

When we introduced our NetGladiator IPS in mid-2012, we built it out with a powerful Layer 7 engine. We have now incorporated this engine into our NetEqualizer code base, so that we can offer you a way to report on protocols on your network. We see this as a complementary component that enhances our NetEqualizer shaping features, and we are excited to offer you this additional visibility into your network traffic.

How to Participate in the 8.0 Beta

The 8.0 Beta is subject to availability. If you are interested in the Beta, and meet the following requirements, please contact us to see if this is a good fit for your situation.

Beta requirements:

– must be current on NSS

– must be running NE3000 or NE4000

– must be on Software Update 7.5

– must be available to provide feedback on the 8.0 Beta features

Once 8.0 reaches GA, these features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.5. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Trade In Your Old NetEqualizer!

Many of you may not be aware that we offer a generous trade-in credit when it is time to retire your old NetEqualizer. We will give you 50%* of the original unit price plus 50% of any license upgrades towards a new unit.

We believe that this offer is unmatched in the industry. Why do we do this? Because we believe that bandwidth shaping should be affordable, and as part of that, we help you to protect your original investment.

How to know if you need a new NetEQ?

1) You can no longer run our current software. NE2000’s earlier than August 2011 cannot run 7.0+.

2) Your hardware warranty has long expired and your unit is over five years old. We offer four years of hardware warranty (NHW), which must be purchased each consecutive year from your original purchase. If you are outside of warranty, your unit is probably past its useful life.

3) You want the faster processors and more memory that new hardware can give you. Just like a PC or tablet, the hardware that we offer today is faster and has more memory than older boxes.

4) And the most important reason, because you want one!

And remember, while we will continue to offer license upgrades on our NE2000 series as needed, if you have a NE2000 purchased before August 2011, it will only be supported through 12/31/2014. If you have an older NE2000, please contact us sometime in 2014 to discuss your options.

If you have questions on trade-in units, feel free to contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

* This offer does not apply to POE or Lite units.


Coming Soon: Mogicho
A new movie offering that leverages our NetEqualizer Caching Option (NCO) infrastructure

In addition to our other projects, we are also progressing with our “Mogicho” offer to bring an amazing assortment of licensed movie content into our NCO caching server. We will be finalizing the license with the content providers next month, and we are excited to say it will be a nice value-add to any ISP needing to enhance their offer to their constituents. We think Mogicho will be especially of interest to ISPs with less than a 5Gbps Netflix streams2 (where Netflix currently is not interested in providing Netflix Open Connect (caching engine)).

Where will this be available?

Mogicho is a new distribution channel for unique online movie content, targeted at rural and remote users not served by Major Internet Providers (M-ISPs).

We are initially releasing Mogicho within the United States and Canada. There are millions of consumers in the United States and Canada who are served by second-tier Internet providers. These second-tier providers (2T-ISPs) include small town cable operators, small town phone companies, and independent rural WISPs.

How does Mogicho work?

Mogicho movie content is secured & stored locally on the NetEqualizer at the 2T-ISP NOC. Video is streamed through the 2T-ISP Access Points directly to customers. Video is available at higher speeds than today, as each customer is not competing with all customers for video to come through the M-ISP throttling point.

s3Looking for more announcements this spring on Mogicho, and if you have questions, contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Best Of The Blog

Guest Article From a WISP Owner in the Trenches

By Rory Conaway – Triad Wireless

Editors Note: A great read if you are thinking of starting a WISP and need a little inspiration. Re-posted with permission from Rory Conaway, Triad Wireless. Rory is president and CEO of Triad Wireless, an engineering and design firm in Phoenix. Triad Wireless specializes in unique RF data and network designs for municipalities, public safety and educational campuses. E-mail comments to rory@triadwireless.net.

Tales from the Towers – Chapter 50: CRY ‘HAVOC!’, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR

Interesting fellow that Shakespeare because not only did he write plays, he also acted in them. And although Tales from the Towers doesn’t hold a candle (pre-electric times, you can groan now) to Mr. William’s contributions to culture, I have a double life too. If you haven’t guessed it yet, writing articles really isn’t my full-time job (my wife is giving me the look that says I should find another hobby), I actually run a WISP, do installs, and handle tech support calls. After 10 years though, and many mistakes and successes, I’ve decided to rethink my network from the ground up as if I was starting tomorrow and share that.

The idea is to help lay out a simplified road map that will bring forth thousands of new WISPs into the market that can start breaking down the digital divide without taxpayer money and creating a new business. Since a thousand bee stings can take out the biggest animal, the more companies that jump into the industry, the better the chances of competing against the incumbents. It’s time to open the floodgates of small business entrepreneurs and begin the war for last mile bandwidth delivery everywhere. And although few outside Star Trek fans will recognize one of Shakespeare’s most famous sayings, they will recognize this modern variation, “Who let the dogs out”! Hopefully it’s the WISP industry…

Photo Of The Month

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Storm Chasing Convention
Given the fact that the winter weather has been so severe this year, Art decided to check in with Greg Forbes (The Weather Channel severe weather expert) at a local storm chaser convention. Here he is with him last weekend. Unfortunately, after talking with him, he can’t make any promises about good weather in the spring.

NetEqualizer News: January 2014


January 2014

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we talk about our Software Update 7.5 release, preview our new prices for 2014, and discuss some exciting new enhancements to NCO. 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 2014 begins, we are excited to see what the year brings. In the United States, the economy is finally improving, at least art_canoe_picturewhen measured by job creation, stock market growth, and real estate sales. Hopefully, this trend continues, as we are ready for the Great Recession to be officially over! We hope that you are seeing an improving economy in your part of the world too.

With the new year, it is time to work on new things! Many of our long-time customers know that I love to work on new ideas and, with this in mind, we are excited to announce a new content partnership with the motion picture industry. I’ll explain this new and exciting expansion of our offerings below.

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!

Announcing Software Update 7.5!

Caching Enhancements & RTR Beta is now G/A

Our first release of 2014 is now available. This release contains two key features: 1) NCO (caching) module enhancements, and 2) our 7.4 Dynamic Real-Time Reporting (RTR) Beta is now Generally Available.

Caching Enhancements
In order to support better YouTube hit ratios for our NetEqualizer Caching Option (NCO), we have invested in technology that keeps up with the changing nature of how YouTube is delivered. YouTube URLs actually appear like dynamic content most of the time, even if it is the same video you are watching from the day before. One of the basic covenants of a caching engine is to NOT cache dynamic content. In this case of YouTube videos, we have built out logic to cache YouTube, as it is not really dynamic content, just dynamic addressing.127

For this release, we consulted with some of the top caching engineers in the world to ensure that we are evolving our caching engine to keep up with the latest addressing schemes. This required a change to our caching logic and some extensive testing in our labs.

It is now economically feasible to make a jump to a 1TB SSD drive. As of 7.5, we have now increased our SSD drive size from 256GB to 1TB. All new caching customers will be shipped the 1TB SSD. For existing NCO customers, if you would like to upgrade your drive size, please contact us for pricing.

New Reporting Features
Our Real-Time Reporting Tool (RTR) Beta version is now Generally Available! We had some great feedback over the last couple of months and are very happy with the way it turned out. Thanks to everyone who participated in our Beta!

The new reporting features built into RTR allow for traffic reporting functionality similar to what you get from ntop. You can see overall traffic patterns from an historic point of view, and you can also drill down to see traffic patterns for specific IP addresses you want to track.

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In addition, we added in the ability to show all rules associated with an IP address for easy trouble shooting. You can now see if a specific IP address is a member of a pool, has an associated hard limit, has priority, or has a connection limit.

allrules

Check out our Software Update 7.5 Release Notes for more details on what Software Update 7.5 includes.

These features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.0+ (NCO features will require NCO). If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


2014 NetEqualizer Pricing Preview

As we begin a new year, we are releasing our 2014 Price List for NetEqualizer, which will be effective February 1st, 2014.

Of note this year is that we have added back a 10Mbps license level to our NE3000 series.

We also continue to offer license upgrades on our NE2000 series. Remember that if you have a NE2000 purchased on or after August 2011, it will be supported past 12/31/2014. If you have an older NE2000, please contact us to discuss your options.

All Newsletter readers can get an advance peek here! For a limited time, the 2014 Price List can be viewed here without registration. You can also view the Data Sheets for each model once in the 2014 Price List.

Current quotes will not be affected by the pricing updates, and will be honored for 90 days from the date the quote was originally given.

If you have questions on pricing, feel free to contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NCO Customers Will Soon Have Access to a Full Movie Library!

One of the things we had on our docket to work on this winter and spring was to expand our caching offering (NCO) to include Netflix.

In our due diligence we consulted with the Netflix Open Connect team (their caching engine), and discovered that they just don’t have the resources to support ISP’s with less than a 5 Gbps Netflix stream. Thus, we could not bundle their caching engine into our NCO offer – it is just too massive in scope.

Streaming long-form video content on the Internet cannot be accomplished reliably without a caching engine. It doesn’t matter how big your pipe is, you need to have a chunk of content stored locally to even have a chance to meet the potential demand – if you make any promises of consistent video content. This is why Netflix has spent millions of dollars providing caching servers to the largest commercial providers. Even with commercial providers’ big pipes to the backbone, they need to host Netflix content on their regional networks.

So what can we do to help our customers offer reliable streaming video content?

1) We would have to load up a caching server with content locally.
2) We would have to continually update it with new and interesting material.
3) We would need to take care of licensing desirable content.

The licensing part is the key to all this. It is not easy with some of the politics in the film industry, but after reaching out to some contacts over the last couple of weeks, it actually is very doable, due to the increase in independent distributors looking for channels.

Did you know that NetEqualizer servers sit in front of roughly 5,000,000 end users? This is sort of a “perfect storm” come to fruition. We have thousands of potential caching servers and a channel in place to serve a set of customers that currently do not have access to online streaming full length movie content. A customer running NCO would be able to choose between a Pay-Per-View (PPV) model and an unlimited content (UC) option.

The details and mechanics of these two options will be outlined in detail in our February Newsletter. In the meantime, please let us know your thoughts on how this offering would work best for your organization, and get on board with NCO to get the ball rolling!

To learn more about NCO, please read our Caching Executive White Paper.

If you have questions, contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Coming Soon: Get Website Category Data from NCO

Along with our other enhancements to NCO, another feature we’ll be rolling out soon with our NetEqualizer Caching Option (NCO) is the ability to gather website category data for sites visited by your users.

This data can not only be used to tune your NetEqualizer, but will help in enforcing usage policies and other requirements.

To learn more about NCO, please read our Caching Executive White Paper.

If you are interested in NCO or have questions about this feature, contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


Best Of The Blog

Top 10 Out-of-the-Box Technology Predictions for 2014

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Back in 2011, I posted some technology predictions for 2012. Below is my revised and updated list for 2014.

1) Look for Google, or somebody, to launch an Internet Service using a balloon off the California Coast.

Well it turns out, those barges out in San Francisco Bay are for something far less ambitious than a balloon-based Internet service, but I still think this is on horizon so I am sticking with it.

2) Larger, slower transport planes to bring down the cost of comfortable international and long range travel.

I did some analysis on the cost of airline operators, and the largest percentage of the cost in air travel is fuel. You can greatly reduce fuel consumption per mile by flying larger, lighter aircraft at slower speeds. Think of these future airships like cruise ships. They will have more comforts than a the typical packed cross-continental flight of today. My guess is, given the choice, passengers will trade off speed for a little price break and more leg room…

Photo Of The Month

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Monterey, CA
Monterey is a waterfront community on the central coast of California with a temperate climate year-round. Kayaking, scuba diving, surfing, whale-watching and beach-going are just some of the activities to be enjoyed in and around Monterey. This photo was taken on a recent visit to Monterey by one of our staff members.

NetEqualizer News: December 2013


December 2013

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we discuss new features planned for 2014, announce our FlyAway Contest winner, give you a heads-up on some options for your old NE2000 devices, and highlight NetGladiator enhancements. 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 the year comes to a close, we are wrapping up our 2013 goals and now starting to look ahead to 2014! I am excited about art_canoe_picturewhere I see 2014 taking APconnections and the NetEqualizer and NetGladiator. You will see our continued commitment to investing in our platforms, from our 2014 planned features for NetEqualizer, to our strengthening of the NetGladiator product, and finally our ongoing work to enhance the NCO caching module. Once you read about our plans, I think you will be excited too! We share them in this newsletter, so that you can start mapping out your plan for 2014 as well…

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!

Planned NEW Features for 2014

The New Year is the perfect time to start thinking about new features for NetEqualizer! It is also a great time for you to start thinking about upgrading your device to the latest software.

2013 saw a lot of changes for NetEqualizer and for 2014 we plan on building on that base even more. In 2014, keep an eye out for some of these exciting new ideas:

1) Expanded caching – We’ve been enhancing our NetEqualizer Caching Option (NCO) for the the last several months and you should expect even more from this add-on feature in 2014.  We are testing out larger SSD drives, assessing whether Netflix can be cached, and looking for even more caching opportunities.

2) Heuristic-based identification – This is a really cool concept that we are currently developing. It is based on the idea that each user has their own unique “path” once they join the network. Knowing that path can help to identify users. The principles apply to both bandwidth optimization and security. Over the next year we’ll be implementing this idea and seeing what value it could add to both our NetEqualizer and NetGladiator product lines. See the next article, NetGladiator Continues to Grow, for more information.

3) Bigger, better, faster Reporting (RTR) – We have received very positive feedback on our initial RTR rollout, and our enhanced RTR Traffic Reports, which are currently in Beta.

We now feel it is time to expand RTR, with a goal to completely replace our ntop historical reporting by end of 2014.

We spent a lot of time in 2013 improving our user interface, and our commitment to making NetEqualizer easy to use will show in 2014 as well. Expect new features in our Dynamic Real-Time Reporting tool including, but not limited to:
– ntop-like historical data tracking
– Pool and VLAN drill-down reports
– Time of day configuration interface
– Penalty graphs over time
– and more!

These features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running version 7.0+ (NCO features will require NCO). If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300


NetGladiator Continues to Grow

Our investment in IPS continues!
We are starting to plan some new features for NetGladiator in 2014, including some exciting heuristic-based identification capability. Deep in the world of network authentication lies a hidden signature. The hidden signature of behavior – the websites you visit, the paths you take, the things you pause on. Just like your fingerprints, your signature when you enter a Network is unique. We’ll be implementing this idea of heuristic-based identification throughout the year – let us know what you think!

Also, we have talked to some of you in 2013 regarding your IPS needs. If you are looking for a simple, elegant, and affordable way to protect your web applications, you should think about the NetGladiator. You should also consider taking our Hacking Challenge to see if your web applications are safe and secure!netgladiator_logo Contact us at:

ips@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

to discuss your security needs.


Our Next Local Linux Talk

Our CTO, Art Reisman, will be speaking at another local linux user group in early January.

The Boulder Linux Users Group will host the event in downtown Boulder, CO on January 9, 2014 at 6pm. Boulder is one of the biggest technology hotbeds outside of Silicon Valley, and we think there will be a lot of interesting discussion and ideas that come out of this meeting.

If you are in the Boulder, CO area at the time, feel free to stop on by!


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.frontier airlines

And the winner is…

Jeff Gay at Morrisville State College! 

Congratulations, Jeff!

Please contact us within 30 days (by January 17, 2014) at:

admin@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

to claim your prize!


Some Options for Your NE2000

Earlier this year, we announced that we are discontinuing our NE2000 series, and are moving the NE2000 license levels (20, 50, 100, and 150Mbps) onto the NE3000 platform. This change was made to get ready for our 7.0+ 64-bit releases, and also to take advantage of multi-core processing. We also felt that it was time to consolidate on the NE3000 platform.

We have talked to many of you regarding this change. However, if you have not already talked to us about trading in your NE2000, we offer a generous 50% trade-in credit of your original unit purchase price towards a new unit (1 trade-in credit per unit purchased please).NE2000 options differ depending on when your NE2000 was purchased. Some of the more recent NE2000’s (purchases from August 2011 and later) can run our 7.0+ software, and these customers will be able to get support AFTER 12/31/2014 on these units.  For units purchased prior to August 20011 that cannot run 7.0+, support will be offered through 12/13/2014.

Contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

to discuss your options.


Best Of The Blog

Latest Notes on the Peer to Peer Front and DMCA Notices

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Just getting back from our tech talk seminar today at Western Michigan University. The topic of DMCA requests came up in our discussions, and here are some of my notes on the subject.

Background: The DMCA, which is the enforcement arm of the motion picture copyright conglomerate, tracks down users with illegal content.

They seem to sometimes shoot first and ask questions later when sending out their notices more specific detail to follow.

Unconfirmed Rumor has it, that one very large University in the State of Michigan just tosses the requests in the garbage and does nothing with them, I have heard of other organizations taking this tact. They basically claim this problem for the DMCA is not the responsibility of the ISP.

I also am aware of a sovereign Caribbean country that also ignores them. I am not advocating this as a solution just an observation…

Photo Of The Month
IMG_6167
Happy Holidays!
Our CTO, Art Reisman, entered this truck in the Louisville, CO Holiday Parade. It was about 5 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) when it was in the parade. This is the 2nd year that Art has created a “Christmas Truck,” and he uses it to deliver cookies to neighbors as well during the Holiday Season.

Network User Authentication Using Heuristics


Most authentication systems are black and white, once you are in , you are in. It was brought our attention recently, that authentication should be an ongoing process,  not a one time gate with continuous unchecked free rein once in.

The reasons are well founded.

1) Students at universities and employees at businesses, have all kinds of devices which can get stolen/borrowed while open.

My high school kids can attest this many times over. Often the result is just an innocuous string of embarrassing texts emanating from their phones claiming absurd things. For example  ” I won’t be at the party, I was digging for a booger and got a nose bleed” ,  blasted out to their friends after they left their phone unlocked.

2) People will also deliberately give out their authentication to friends and family

This leaves a hole in standard authentication strategies .

Next year we plan to add an interesting twist to our Intrusion Detection Device ( NetGladiator). The idea was actually not mine, but was suggested by a customer recently at our user group meeting in Western Michigan.

Here is the plan.

The idea for our intrusion detection device would be to build a knowledge base of a user’s habits over time and then match those established patterns against a  tiered alert system when there is any kind of abrupt   change.

It should be noted that we would not be monitoring content, and thus we would be far less invasive than Google Gmail ,with their targeted advertisements,  we would primarily just following the trail or path of usage and not reading content.

The heuristics would consist of a three-pronged model.

Prong one, would look at general trending access across all users globally . If  an aggregate group of users on the network were downloading an IOS update, then this behavior would be classified as normal for individual users.

Prong two ,  would look at the pattern of usage for the authenticated user. For example most people tune their devices to start at a particular page. They also likely use a specific e-mail client, and then have their favorite social networking sites. String together enough these and you would develop unique foot print for that user. Yes the user could deviate from their pattern of established usage as long as there were still elements of their normal usage in their access patterns.

Prong three would be the alarming level. In general a user would receive a risk rating when they deviated into suspect behaviors outside their established baseline. Yes this is profiling similar to psychological profiling on employment tests, which are very accurate at predicting future behavior.

A simple example of a risk factor would be a user that all of sudden starts executing login scripts en masse outside of their normal pattern. Something this egregious would be flagged as high risk,  and the administrator could specify an automatic disconnection for the user at a high risk level. Lower risk behavior would be logged for after the fact forensics if any internal servers became compromised.

NetEqualizer News: November 2013


November 2013

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we discuss takeaways from our recent Technical Seminar, update you on our 7.4 RTR Beta progress, and highlight recent enhancements to our NetEqualizer Caching Option. 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 move into the end of 2013, we start once again to sum up the year and think about all we are thankful for. We would like to take this opportunity to THANK YOU all for being a part of our success! We truly enjoy working with each and every one of you, and appreciate your business!thank_you

As most of you know, 2013 was a big year for us – our 10th Anniversary. Looking back, it has gone so fast! Looking forward, we see a bright future with even more opportunity on a global scale. Speaking of global, we had a staff member this month travel to Malaysia to conduct two 1-day training sessions – a national university there, IIUM, has many campuses throughout Malaysia where they employ NetEqualizers. If you are interested in learning more about our training offerings, contact us anytime!

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!

2013 Fall Technical Seminar Update

We recently held a half day seminar at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We would like to thank our host, Fawn Callen, for helping us get this event together, and for offering such as great space for the seminar!
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This was a great opportunity for folks to meet with Art in person, pick his brain on all things related to equalizing and caching, and also to share ideas with us on future features.

Here are some of the features that we walked away thinking about:

1) Historical penalty tracking over time – this would be graphical and would help you see an historical trend on how tight your bandwidth is.

2) Enhance the masking feature to allow for more subnets so that organizations can take advantage of ISP-offered bandwidth allotments for traffic such as video.

3) Heuristic-based identification of users based on usage patterns – track individuals not based on IP, necessarily, but based on how they use the Internet, what sites they visit, etc.

Let us know if these are important to you!
neteq seminar logo with border
Contact us at:

sales@apconnections.net


Update on 7.4 RTR Beta

We have a great group of customers trying out our 7.4 RTR Beta Software Release – and the results have been very positive!

We are working on making the data logging and graphing more efficient for large networks as well as some other small changes that will help make RTR and NetEqualizer in general even better and more useful!

totaltraffic

We’ll be thoroughly testing our enhancements the rest of November and December and all of those will be incorporated into our official 7.5 Software Release on January 1st.

This Release will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support who are running 7.0+. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net


NetEqualizer Caching Enhancements

As we have discussed in previous issues of NetEqualizer News, we’ve been working hard with the folks at Squid to create a more robust custom caching solution for NetEqualizer.

Our enhancements include:

1) An updated caching solution that includes fixes and the latest features from Squid. This is beyond what open source has, and has been greatly improved with help from our Squid development consultant.

2) We are in the process of debating whether or not to include Netflix in future implementations of our caching. In relation to the NetEqualizer, the cost for doing this could be a bit high. However, there is good news. Providers are starting to offer Netflix traffic at a greatly reduced rate to their clients. We’ve already built in features that will help these clients take advantage of this offering. You can read more about caching in the cloud and Netflix traffic in the Best Of The Blog section of this newsletter.

For more information on the NetEqualizer Caching Option, read our white paper!


Best Of The Blog

Caching in the Cloud is Here

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

I just got a note from a customer, a University, that their ISP is offering them 200 megabit internet at fixed price. The kicker is, they can also have access to a 1 gigabit feed specifically for YouTube at no extra cost. The only explanation for this is that their upstream ISP has an extensive in-network YouTube cache. I am just kicking myself for not seeing this coming!

I was well-aware that many of the larger ISPs cached NetFlix and YouTube on a large scale, but this is the first I have heard of a bandwidth provider offering a special reduced rate for YouTube to a customer downstream. I am just mad at myself for not predicting this type of offer and hearing about it from a third party.

As for the NetEqualizer, we have already made adjustments in our licensing for this differential traffic to come through at no extra charge beyond your regular license level, in this case 200 megabits. So if for example, you have a 350 megabit license, but have access to a 1Gbps YouTube feed, you will pay for a 350 megabit license, not 1Gbps. We will not charge you for the overage while accessing YouTube…

Photo Of The Month
Petronas Towers – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
As we mentioned in the Newsletter opener, a staff member of ours recently journeyed to Malaysia to conduct training sessions for NetEqualizer in two locations – Kuala Lumpur and Kuantan. The experience was a memorable one – Malaysia is a beautiful country with fantastic food, culture, and people. The 1,483 foot Petronas Towers are a testament to their success.