NetEqualizer News: January 2015

January 13, 2015 — netequalizer

January 2015

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we highlight leasing a NetEqualizer with NO contract, discuss our new IPv6 shaping process, share a recent case study, and preview our 2015 price adjustments. As always, feel free to pass this along to others who might be interested in NetEqualizer News.
A message from Art…
Art Reisman, CTO – APconnections

As we kick off 2015, I am knee-deep once again in architecting solutions, which many of you know is what I love to do most! It feels good to start 2015 following my passion – I hope you are committing or re-committing to spend time doing those things that you love most. art

Speaking of architecture, this month I share with you the upcoming IPv6 Release (8.1v6) design. I also am excited to include our latest Case Study; we have captured Lutheran Health Network’s experience with the NetEqualizer. This large-scale NetEqualizer implementation is a great read, particularly for customers with multiple sites using varying bandwidths. And finally, we give you a preview of 2015 pricing. Some good news here – we have reduced prices on two license levels!

We love it when we hear back from you – so if you have a story you would like to share with us of how we have helped you, let us know. Email me directly at art@apconnections.net. I would love to hear from you!

The Joy of Leasing

In 2015, we are continuing our popular no-contract, monthly Leasing Program.

This program works best for several types of customers:leasing

1) Customers who need to align monthly expenditures with a monthly revenue stream.

2) Customers with limited budgets that need to reduce their upfront costs.

3) Customers who would like user-based pricing.

Why is leasing a NetEqualizer joyful? We think that our leasing program is superior to what you would find through a typical 3rd party lessor. We keep the process simple, and make it easy for you to participate. In fact, we started this program because we were tired of the long drawn-out process full of tons of paperwork, signatures, and waiting, while trying to work with lessors on behalf of our customers. We decided that we could do this better, and we think we have!

We have found this model popular, as customers can immediately get the benefits of a full-featured NetEqualizer without committing to a large upfront expenditure. And, there is no long-term commitment; if your needs change in the future, you can exit or modify your Lease Program as needed.

This model works well for businesses that would like to align their shaping costs with the number of users they have on their network, rather than the size of their network pipe. In smaller businesses, this enables customers to better align their costs with their actual potential revenue stream rather than their network size.

In the past several years, we have seen Schools, Business Centers and Internet Service Providers participate in our Monthly Leasing Program.

If this sounds of interest to you, call us to discuss or check out our Leasing Program to see if it meets your needs!

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

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

Architecting the IPv6 Release (8.1v6)

We have word from a few customers running dual stacks that they do have enough IPv6 traffic that it needs to be addressed in the NetEqualizer shaper, especially during peak traffic times.

Now that IPv6 is becoming a reality in many networks, I am focusing my efforts on architecting our solution, which I share here:

We realized early on in our design choices that a customer running a dual stack may have two addressing schemes, but they still have one bandwidth link to shape as a whole. In other words, all the shaping decisions will be based on the total bandwidth across both sets of addresses, and not a separate decision for IPv6 and IPv4.

With that decision, the easiest way to accomplish this for reporting and shaping was to trick the IPv6 traffic into an IPv4 format, which is what we are going to do.

We examined real IPv6 traffic on a live network, and as expected the upper bytes in the address rarely, if ever, change. So by taking the lower 24 bits of the IPv6 address and mapping that into a locally unique IPv4 address, we can show and shape all the traffic in one table.

We will have Beta versions of 8.1v6 ready to run in late February. At that time we will also have examples and documentation on how to track and shape your IPv6 traffic on the NetEqualizer.

Stay tuned here to learn more about our IPv6 Release this Spring! And if you have any thoughts or input on IPv6 that you would like to share, shoot me an email at art@apconnections.net.

Case Study: Lutheran Health Networkcasestudy

Recently we received feedback from Lutheran Health Network (LHN) on how their NetEqualizer’s have helped to optimize their network infrastructure. It was so much great information that we captured it as a Case Study to share with you.

Jason Whiteaker, a Senior Network Engineer at LHN, describes their environment, what challenges they faced, solutions considered, and the great results they have had with the NetEqualizer in place. Read the full Case Study here to see how the NetEqualizer has been a technical and political “win-win” for the network team.

This Case Study demonstrates how the NetEqualizer works well in hub and spoke environments. To read more about how effective the NetEqualizer is at hub and spoke shaping, check out our blog article on the subject.

2015 NetEqualizer Pricing Preview

As promised in last month’s newsletter, all newsletter readers can now get an advance peek of our 2015 NetEqualizer Pricing! For a limited time, you can now preview of our 2015 Pricing here without registration. You can also view the Data Sheets for each model once in the 2015 Price List.

Our 2015 Pricing will be effective February 1st, 2015.

Key changes for 2015:

– Due to popular demand, we are adding two license levels to the NE3000 series: 500Mbps and 750 Mbps.
– Exciting news for folks looking at 100 or 150Mbps licenses. We have reduced prices on the 100Mbps and 150Mbps license levels, to better align our pricing model.
– And finally, as we are seeing more customers moving to higher bandwidth levels, we have decided to no longer offer the 10Mbps license in 2015.

If you are interested in user-based pricing, we are continuing to offer our Monthly Lease Program in 2015. You can read more about that in The Joy of Leasing in this month’s newsletter.

We will be using 2014 pricing through January, and all current quotes using the pricing will be honored for 90 days from the date the quote was originally given. However, if you have an outstanding quote on a 100 or 150Mbps unit, we will be happy to update it for you to use the new lower pricing.

We also continue to offer license upgrades on our newer NE2000’s. Remember that if you have a NE2000 purchased on or after August 2011, it is eligible for license upgrades and support. If you have an older NE2000, please contact us to discuss a trade-in.

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

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

Best Of The Blog

How Does Your ISP Actually Enforce Your Internet Speed?

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Have you ever wondered how your ISP manages to control the speed of your connection? If so, you might find the following article enlightening. Below, we’ll discuss the various trade-offs used to control and break out bandwidth rate limits and the associated side effects of using those techniques…
Photo Of The Month
bird
Roseate Spoonbill from Merritt Island National Seashore
The best thing NASA did besides going to the moon was preserving miles and miles of shoreline on the east coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral. The Merritt Island bird loop is better than the wild animal safari you can take over at Disneyland, alligators and exotic birds like you have never seen before.
Posted in Newsletters. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Changing times, Five Points to Consider When Trying to Shape Internet Traffic

January 5, 2015 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman, CTO, APconnections www.netequalizer.com

1 ) Traditional Layer 7 traffic shaper methods are NOT able to identify encrypted traffic. In fact, short of an NSA back door, built into some encryption schemes, traditional Layer 7 traffic shapers are slowly becoming obsolete as the percentage of encrypted traffic expands.
2 ) As of 2014, it was estimated that up to 6 percent of the traffic on the Internet is encrypted, and this is expected to double in the next year or so.
3) It is possible to identify the source and destination of traffic even on encrypted streams. The sending and receiving IP’s of encrypted traffic are never encrypted, hence large content providers, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix may be identified by their IP address, but there some major caveats.

– it is common for the actual content from major content providers to be served from regional servers under different domain names (they are often registered to third parties). Simply trying to identify traffic content from its originating domain is too simplistic.

– I have been able to trace proxied traffic back to its originating domain with accuracy by first doing some experiments. I start by initiating a download from a known source, such as YouTube or Netflix, and then I can figure out the actual IP address of the proxy that the download is coming from. From this, I then know that this particular IP is most likely the source of any subsequent YouTube. The shortfall with relying on this technique is that IP addresses change regionally, and there are many of them. You cannot assume what was true today will be true tomorrow with respect to any proxy domain serving up content. Think of the domains used for content like a leased food cart that changes menus each week.

4) Some traffic can be identified by behavior, even when it is encrypted. For example, the footprint of a single computer with a large connection count can usually be narrowed down to one of two things. It is usually either BitTorrent, or some kind of virus on a local computer. BitTorrents tend to open many small connections and hold them open for long periods of time. But again there are caveats. Legit BitTorrent providers such as Universities distributing public material will use just a few connections to accomplish the data transfer. Whereas consumer grade BitTorrents, often used for illegal file sharing, may use 100’s of connections to move a file.

5)  I have been alerted to solutions that require organizations to retrofit all endpoints with pre-encryption utilities, thus allowing the traffic shaper to receive data before it is encrypted.  I am not privy to the mechanics on how this is implemented, but I would assume outside of very tightly controlled networks, such a method would be a big imposition on users.

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Educational Articles. Leave a Comment »

Net Neutrality must be preserved

December 30, 2014 — netequalizer

As much as I hate to admit it, it seems a few of our Republican congressional leaders are “all in” on allowing large content providers to have privileged priority access on the Internet. Their goal for the 2015 congress is to thwart the President and his Mandate to the FCC on net neutrality. Can you imagine going to visit Yosemite National park and being told that the corporations that sponsor the park have taken all the campsites? Or a special lane on the Interstate dedicated exclusively for Walmart Trucks?  Like our highway system and our National parks, the Internet is a resource shared by all Americans.

I think one of the criteria for being a politician is a certification that you flunked any class in college that involved critical or objective thinking, for example, this statement from Rep Marsha Blackburn

“Federal control of the internet will restrict our online freedom and leave Americans facing the same horrors that they have experienced with HealthCare.gov,”

She might as well compare the Internet to the Macy’s parade, it would make about as much sense; the Internet is a common shared utility similar to electricity and roads, and besides that, it was the Government that invented and funded most of the original Internet. The healthcare system is complex and flawed because it is a socialistic re-distribution of wealth, not even remotely similar to the Internet.  The internet needs very simple regulation to prevent abuse, this is about the only thing the government is designed to do effectively. And then there is this stifle innovation argument…

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said he may seek legislation that would aim to undermine the “FCC’s net neutrality authority by shifting it to antitrust enforcers,” Politico wrote.

Calling any such net neutrality rules a drag on innovation and competition

Let me translate for him because he does not understand or want to understand the motivations of the lobbyist when they talk about stifling innovation. My Words: “Regulation, in the form of FCC imposed net neutrality, will stifle the ability of the larger access providers and content providers from creating a walled off garden, thus stifling their pending monopoly on the Internet.” There are many things where I wish the Government would keep their hands out of, but the Internet is not one of them. I must side with the FCC and the President on this one.

Update Jan 31st

Another win for Net Neutrality, the Canadian Government outlaws the practice of zero rating, which is simply a back door for a provider to give free content over rivals.

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

NetEqualizer News: December 2014

December 17, 2014 — netequalizer

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.
Posted in Newsletters. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

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

December 2, 2014 — netequalizer

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.

Posted in Contests, News. 1 Comment »

NetEqualizer News: November 2014

November 22, 2014 — netequalizer

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.
Posted in Newsletters. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Do hotels ever block your personal wifi ?

November 21, 2014 — netequalizer

Apparently at least one hotel does. We had written an article hinting that this might be the case  back in 2010.  Hotel operators at the time were hurting from the loss of phone call charges as customers turned to their cell phones, and were looking for creative ways to charge for Internet service.

Hence I was not surprised to see this article today.

FCC: Marriott blocked guests’ personal Wi-Fi, charged for Net access

Federal Communications Commission fines Marriott $600,000 after deciding it illegally interfered with conventiongoers’ hot spots in Nashville. Marriott says it did nothing wrong.

In its judgment, the FCC said “Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, while at the same time charging consumers, small businesses and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network.”

read more

Posted in Bandwidth Monitoring, Commentary and Editorials. Leave a Comment »

How to keep your IP address static with DHCP

November 7, 2014 — netequalizer

One of the features we support with the NetEqualizer product is a Quota tool, which keeps a running count of total bytes used per IP on a network. A typical IT administrator wants to keep track of data on a per user basis over time, hence some form of Quota tool is essential.  However, a potential drawback of our methodology is that we track usage by IP.   Most networks use a technology called DHCP that dynamically hands out a new IP address each time you power up and power down your computer or wireless device. Most network administrators can track a specific user to an IP in the moment, but they have no idea who had the IP address last week or last month.  Note: there are authentication tools such as Radius or Nomadix that can be used to track users by name but, this adds a complex layer of additional overhead to a simple network.

Yesterday, when working with a customer, the subject came up about our Quota tool, and its drawback of not being able to track a user by IP over time, and the customer turned that into a teaching moment for me.

You see, a DHCP server will always try and give the same IP address back to the same device if the previous IP address is available.   So the key is keeping that IP address available; and there is a simple trick to make sure that this happens.

When you set up a DHCP server it will ask you the range of IP addresses you want to use. All one needs to do is ensure that the defined range is much bigger than the number of devices that will be on your network, and then you can be almost certain that a device will always get the same IP.  This is because the DHCP server only re-uses previously assigned IP addresses when all IP addresses have been assigned, and this would only happen if you defined your IP address range to a relative small number relative to the number of potential devices on your network.   There is no real extra cost for defining your DHCP address range as a Class B instead of the typical default Class C, which then expands your range from 255 to 64,000.  So make sure your ranges are large enough and feel free to track your users by IP without worry.

If you would like to learn more about our Quota tool, also known as “User Quota”, you can read more about it in our User Guide.

Posted in Bandwidth Monitoring, Educational Articles. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

More lies and deceit from your ISP

October 29, 2014 — netequalizer

Note: We believe bandwidth shaping is a necessary and very valuable tool for both ISPs and the public. We also support open honest discussion about the need for this technology and encourage our customers to open and honest with their customers.    We do not like deception in the industry at any level and will continue to expose and write about it when we see it. 

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 on-line comments for the day, and the editor was happy.  At that time, I recall feeling like a lone wolf trying to point out these practices.  Finally some redemption came this morning. The FTC is flexing its muscles; they are now taking on AT&T for false claims with respect to unlimited data.

Federal officials on Tuesday sued AT&T, the nation’s second-largest cellular carrier, for allegedly deceiving millions of customers by selling them supposedly “unlimited” data plans that the company later “throttled” by slowing Internet speeds when customers surfed the Web too much.

It seems that you can have an unlimited data plan with AT&T, but if you try to use it all the time, they slow down your speed to the point where the amount of data you get approaches zero. You get unlimited data, as long as you don’t use it – huh?  Does that make sense?

Recently, I have been doing some experiments with Comcast and my live dropcam home video feed.  It seems that if I try to watch this video feed on my business class Comcast, (it comes down from the dropcam cloud), the video will time out within about minute or so. However, other people watching my feed do not have this problem. So, I am starting to suspect that Comcast is using some form of application shaper to cut off my feed (or slow it down to the point where it does not work).  My evidence is only anecdotal.  I am supposed to have unlimited 4 megabits up and 16 megabits down with my new business class service, but I am starting to think there may be some serious caveats hidden in this promise.

Posted in Commentary and Editorials, Network Speed. Tags: , . 1 Comment »

Where can you find the fastest Internet Speeds ?

October 27, 2014 — netequalizer

The fastest Internet Speeds on earth can be found on any police detective related shows, CSI, etc.  Pick a modern TV show, or movie for that matter, with a technology scene, and you’ll find that the investigators can log into the Internet from any place on earth, and the connection is perfect. They can bring up images and data files instantly, while on the move, in a coffee shop, in a  hotel, it does not matter.  They can be in some remote village in India or back at the office, super perfectly fast connection every time.  Even the bad guys have unlimited bandwidth from anywhere in the world on these shows.

So if you ever need fast Internet, find a friend who works in government or law enforcement, and ask for shared access.

On the other hand,  I just spent a weekend in a small hotel where nothing worked, their wireless was worthless – pings went unanswered for 30 seconds at a time, and my backup Verizon 4g was also sporadic in and out. So I just gave up and read a magazine. When this happens, I wish I could just go to the Verizon Back Haul at their tower and plug a NetEqualizer in, this would immediately stop their data crush.

End of thought of day

Posted in Commentary and Editorials, Network Speed. Leave a Comment »

NetEqualizer News: October 2014

October 21, 2014 — netequalizer

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.
Posted in Newsletters. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

Notes from a cyber criminal

October 10, 2014 — netequalizer

After a couple of recent high profile data thefts,   I put the question to myself,  how does a cyber thief convert a large amount of credit cards into a financial windfall?

I did some research, and then momentarily put on the shoes of a cyber thief, here are my notes and thoughts:

I am the greatest hacker in the world and I just got a-hold of twenty million  Home Depot debit cards and account numbers. What is my next move. Well I guess I could just start shopping at Home Depot every day and maxing out all my stolen account cards with a bunch of Lawn Mowers , Garden Hoses, and other items. How many times could I do this before I got caught ?  Probably not that many, I am sure the buying patterns would be flagged even before the consumer realized their card was stolen , especially if I was nowhere near the home area code of my victim(s).  And then I’d have to fence all those items to turn it into cash. But let’s assume I acted quickly and went on a home depot shopping spree with my twenty million cards.  Since I am a big time crook I am looking for a haul I can retire on, and so I’d want to buy and fence at least a few hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff out the gate. Now that is going to be quite a few craig(s) list advertisements, and one logistical nightmare to move those goods, and also I am leaving a trail back to me because at some point I have to exchange the goods with the buyer and they are going to want to pay by check . Let me re-think this…

Okay so I am getting smarter, forget the conventional method , what if I find some Russian portal where I can just sell the Home Depot cards and have the funds paid in Bitcoin to some third-party account that is untraceable.  How many people actually have Bitcoin accounts, and how many are interested in buying stolen credit cards on the black market, and then how to insure that the numbers have not been deactivated ? Suppose I sell to some Mafia type and the cards are not valid anymore ? Will they track me down and kill me ? Forget the Bitcoin,  I’ll have to use Paypal , again leaving a trail of some kind.  So now how do I market my credit card fencing site, I have 20 million cards to move and no customers.  A television advertisement , an underworld blog post ?  I need customers to buy these cards and I need them fast , once I start selling them Home Depot will only take a few days to shut down their cards . Maybe I can just have an agent hawk them in Thailand for $3 each , that way I stay anonymous, yeh that’s what I’ll do whew , I’ll be happy if I can net a few thousand dollars.

Conclusion: Although the theft of a data makes a great headline and is certainly not to be taken lightly , the ability for the crook(s) to convert bounty into a financial windfall, although possible is most likely a far more difficult task than the data theft . Stealing the data is one thing, but profiting from it on anything but the smallest scale is very difficult if not impossible.

The real problem for the hacked commercial institution is not the covering the loss of revenue from the theft, but the loss of company value from loss of public trust which can mount into the billions.

Although my main business is Bandwidth Control I do spend a good deal of thought cycles on Security as on occasion the two go hand in hand. For example some of the utilities we use on our NetEqualizer are used to thwart DOS attacks.  We also have our NetGladiator product which is simply the best and smartest tool out there for preventing an attack through your Website.

Posted in Educational Articles, Security. Leave a Comment »

NetEqualizer News: September 2014

September 21, 2014 — netequalizer

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 »

Surviving iOS updates

September 15, 2014 — netequalizer

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, weighting 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?

The most obvious option to gravitate to is caching. I found this nice article (thanks Luke) on the Squid settings used for a previous iOS update in 2013.  Having worked with Squid quite a bit helping our customers, I was not surprised on the amount of tuning required to get this to work, and I suspect there will be additional changes to make it work in 2014.

If you have a Squid caching solution already up and running it is worth a try, but I am on the fence of recommending a Squid install from scratch.  Why? Because we are seeing diminishing returns from Squid caching each year due to the amount of dynamic content.  Translation: Very few things on the Internet come from the same place with the same filename anymore, and for many content providers they are marking much of their content as non-cacheable.

If you have a NetEqualizer in place you can easily blunt the effects of the data crunch with a standard default set-up. The NetEqualizer will automatically push the updates out further into time, especially during peak hours when there is contention. This will allow other applications on your network to function normally during the day. I doubt anybody doing the update will notice the difference.

Finally if you are desperate, you might be able to block access to anything IOS update on your firewall.  This might seem a bit harsh, but then again Apple did not consult with you, and besides isn’t that what the free Internet at Starbucks is for?

Here is a snippet pulled from a forum on how to block it.

iOS devices check for new versions by polling the server mesu.apple.com. This is done via HTTP, port 80. Specifically, the URL is:

http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml

If you block or redirect mesu.apple.com, you will inhibit the check for software updates. If you are really ambitious, you could redirect the query to a cached copy of the XML, but I haven’t tried that. Please remove the block soon; you wouldn’t want to prevent those security updates, would you?

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Caching and Video. 1 Comment »

Your Critical Business Needs Two Sources for Internet

August 27, 2014 — netequalizer

Time Warner’s Nationwide outage got my wheels turning again about how we perceive risk when it comes to network outages.

For example:

We have close to 10,000 NetEqualizer systems in the field, of which, we get about 10 failures a year. If you further break down those failures  to root cause, about 80 percent are due to some external event:

  •  lightning
  • flood
  • heat
  • blunt trauma

Given that breakdown, the chances of a NetEqualizer failure for a well-maintained system in a properly vented environment is far less than 1 percent a year. I would also assume that for a simple router or firewall the failure rate is about the same.

Now compare those odds with the chances that your Internet provider is going to crash and burn for some extended outage during the business day  over the course of a full year?

I would say the odds of this happening approach 100 percent.

And yet, the perception often is that, you need a hardware fail-over strategy, and that certainly is a good idea for those who have critical Internet needs. But if you are truly trying to mitigate risk in order of precedence, you should address the potential outages from your provider before investing in redundant hardware.

Here again, our top 5 reasons for an Internet Outage.

Below are list of recent publicly reported outages for various reasons. I am not intentionally picking on the larger service providers here , I do not believe they are any more or less vulnerable than some smaller regional providers , they just tend to make news headlines with their outages.

Comcast Outage for North Denver Fiber cut

Comcast hit with massive Internet outage

Forum discussion about wide spread Internet outage Des Moines Iowa

Spokane Washington 10,000 customers without Internet service

Wide spread Internet outage London , Virgin Media

Posted in Network Redundancy. 1 Comment »
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