NetEqualizer Software Update Improves VLAN Shaping, NTOP

June 9, 2009 — netequalizer

Editor’s Note: The following blog entry explains the newest NetEqualizer features available with our most recent software update. While minor bug fixes are often included in these updates, they will not always be detailed.

We recently released our newest NetEqualizer software update, further improving on our existing technology. The following fixes have been implemented from the the previous 2.43k version to the latest 3.32a.

  1. Upgraded internal disk memory caching. This feature remedied an issue with NTOP that was causing disk corruptions on the CF drive.
  2. Subnet masking was modified such that masked traffic will not count against your license level. Prior to this change, a customer with a 10-meg license who ran 100 meg local transfers across their NetEqualizer would experience a license violation. You can now mask that traffic (make it invisible to the NetEqualizer and hence not violate your license).
  3. A bug fix was put in for customers who run asymmetric pools. Bandwidth pools with different upload and download speeds were not working correctly prior to this fix.
  4. VLAN shaping fix. There was an issue on cold restarts.
  5. Support for multi-core CPU
  6. More efficient connection limit processing

This software update is available without charge for NetEqualizer customers with a current NetEqualizer Software Subscription (NSS). For more information on this update, or the NSS, contact us at admin@apconnections.net.


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Do We Need an Internet User Bill of Rights?

June 4, 2009 — netequalizer

The Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference wraps up today in Washington, D.C., with conference participants having paid significant attention to the on-going debates concerning ISPs, Deep Packet Inspection and net neutrality.  Over the past several days, representatives from the various interested parties have made their cases for and against certain measures pertaining to user privacy. As was expected, demands for the protection of user privacy often came into conflict with ISPs’ advertising strategies and their defense of their overall network quality.

At the center of this debate is the issue of transparency and what ISPs are actually telling customers. In many cases, apparent intrusions into user privacy are qualified by what’s stated in the “fine print” of customer contracts. If these contracts notify customers that their Internet activity and personal information may be used for advertising or other purposes, then it can’t really be said that the customer’s privacy has been invaded. But, the question is, how many users actually read their contracts, and furhtermore, how many people actually understand the fine print? It would be interesting to see what percentage of Internet users could define deep packet inspection. Probably not very many.

This situation is reminiscent of many others involving service contracts, but one particular timely example comes to mind — credit cards. Last month, the Senate passed a credit card “bill of rights,” through which consumers would be both better protected and better informed. Of the latter, President Obama stated, “you should not have to worry that when you sign up for a credit card, you’re signing away all your rights. You shouldn’t need a magnifying glass or a law degree to read the fine print that sometimes doesn’t even appear to be written in English.”

Ultimately, the same should be true for any service contracts, but especially if private information is at stake, as is the case with the Internet privacy debate. Therefore, while it’s a step in the right direction to include potential user privacy issues in service contracts, it should not be done only with the intention of preventing potential legal backlash, but rather with the customer’s true understanding of the agreement in mind.

Editor’s Note: APconnections and NetEqualizer have long been a proponent of both transparency and the protection of user privacy, having devoted several years to developing technology that maintains network quality while respecting the privacy of Internet users.

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Obama’s Revival of Net Neutrality Revisits An Issue Hardly Forgotten

June 1, 2009 — netequalizer

Last Friday, President Obama reinvigorated (for many people, at least) the debate over net neutrality during a speech from the White House on cybersecurity. The president made it clear that users’ privacy and net neutrality would not be threatened under the guise of cybersecurity measures. President Obama stated:

“Let me also be clear about what we will not do. Our pursuit of cyber-security will not — I repeat, will not include — monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be — open and free.”

While this is certainly an important issue on the security front, for many ISPs and networks administrators, it didn’t take the president’s comments to put user privacy or net neutrality back in the spotlight.  In may cases, ISPs and network administrators constantly must walk the fine line between net neutrality, user privacy, and ultimately the well being of their own networks, something that can be compromised on a number of fronts (security, bandwidth, economics, etc.).

Therefore, despite the president’s on-going commitment to net neturality, the issue will continue to be debated and remain at the forefront of the minds of ISPs, administrators, and many users. Over the past few years, we at NetEqualizer have been working to provide a compromise for these interested parties, ensuring network quality and neutrality while protecting the privacy of users. It will be interesting to see how this debate plays out, and what it will mean for policy, as the philosophy of network neutrality continues to be challenged — both by individuals and network demands.

Further Reading

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APconnections Announces 50-Percent-Off Sale of New NetEqualizer-Lite

May 26, 2009 — netequalizer

Beginning May 26, all customers purchasing a full size NetEqualizer 2000/3000 model will qualify for a 50-percent discount on the NetEqualizer-Lite. In addition, the offer will be extended to all existing NetEqualizer users who will also be entitled to the 50-percent discount on their first NetEqualizer-Lite purchase. This offer is valid until June 30, 2009. Limit two per customer.

As well as offering users the same services available through previously released NetEqualizer models, the NetEqualizer-Lite is Power-over-Ethernet (PoE), handling up to 10 megabits of traffic and 200 users. Furthermore, the NetEqualizer-Lite also serves to solve hidden node issues without customers having to change their existing access points.*

Although the core technology behind the NetEqualizer has not changed, with the latest release price point, many ISPs and businesses are deploying the NetEqualizer-Lite closer to end users, often directly behind congested access points.

After just over a month in the field, NetEqualizer-Lite users are reporting they can now easily increase Internet subscribers by 30 to 50 percent at once congested towers and AP sites. For example, a customer with an 802.11b radio now has 100 subscribers on his network and is still running smoothly. In the past, this customer’s norm for saturation stood at roughly 20 users, but he is now enjoying a 500-percent increase after installing the NetEqualizer-Lite. This is translating into both higher revenues and a more satisfied customer base.

The NetEqualizer-Lite lists at $1499. In addition to the 50-percent discount, we are also currently offering volume discounts. Pricing information on all other NetEqualizer models is available online at http://www.netequalizer.com. For more information, please contact APconnections at 1-800-918-2763 or admin@apconnections.net.

*Hidden nodes are a problem frequently encountered by commercial wireless operators that has previously been solved using APconnections’ AirEqualizer technology. The NetEqualizer-Lite’s capability to offer similar solutions is simply one of the multiple benefits of the technology for administrators of networks of many different types and sizes.

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New Asymmetric Shaping Option Augments NetEqualizer-Lite

May 21, 2009 — netequalizer

We currently have a new release in beta testing that allows for equalizing on an asymmetric link. As is the case with all of our equalizing products, this release will allow users to more efficiently utilize their bandwidth, thus optimizing network performance. This will be especially ideal for users of our recently released NetEqualizer-Lite.

Many wireless access points have a limit on the total amount of bandwidth they can transmit in both directions. This is because only one direction can be talking at a time. Unlike wired networks, where a 10-meg link typically means you can have 10 megs UP and 10 megs going the other direction simultaneously, in  a wireless network you can only have 10 megabits total at any one time.  So, if you had 7 megabits coming in, you could only have 3 megabits going out. These limits are a hard saturation point.

In the past, it was necessary to create separate settings for both the up and down stream. With the new NetEqualizer release, you can simply tell the NetEqualizer that you have an asymmetric 10-megabit link, and congestion control will automatically kick in for both streams,  alleviating bottlenecks more efficiently and keeping your network running smoothly.

For more information on APconnections’ equalizing technology, click here.

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NetEqualizer-Lite Revolutionizing WISP Performance

May 21, 2009 — netequalizer

After just over a month in the field, NetEqualizer-Lite users are reporting they can now easily increase Internet subscribers by 30 to 50 percent at once congested towers and access point (AP) sites. For example, a customer with an 802.11 B radio now has 100 subscribers on his network and is still running smoothly. In the past, this customer’s norm for saturation stood at roughly 20 users, but he is now enjoying a 500-percent increase after installing the NetEqualizer-Lite. This is translating into both higher revenues and a more satisfied customer base.

Although the core technology behind the NetEqualizer has not changed, with the latest release price point, many users are deploying the NetEqualizer-Lite closer to customers or just behind their congested wireless access points. Customer satisfaction with the new release has been consistent across the board, with users voicing their reviews to us directly as well as online. One user on DSLReports.com commented:

“The Netequalizer has resulted in dramatically improved service to our customers….Bottom line to this is that we can deliver significantly more data through the same AP. The customers hitting web pages, checking e-mail, etc. virtually always see full bandwidth, and the hogs don’t impact these customers. Even the hogs see better performance” (dslreports.com).

In addition to offering users the same services available through previously released NetEqualizer models, the NetEqualizer-Lite is Power-over-Ethernet (PoE), handling up to 10 megabits of traffic and 200 users. Furthermore, the NetEqualizer-Lite also serves to solve hidden node issues without customers having to change their existing APs.*

The NetEqualizer-Lite lists at $1499, but we are currently offering volume discounts. Please contact us for more information at 1-800-918-2763 or admin@apconnections.net.

*Hidden nodes are a problem frequently encountered by commercial wireless operators that has previously been solved using APconnections’ AirEqualizer technology. The NetEqualizer-Lite’s capability to offer similar solutions is simply one of the multiple benefits of the technology for administrators of networks of many different types and sizes.
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NetEqualizer-Lite Is Now Available!

May 11, 2009 — netequalizer

Last month, we introduced our newest release, a Power-over-Ethernet NetEqualizer. Since then, with your help, we’ve titled the new release the NetEqualizer-Lite and are already getting positive feedback from users. Here’s a little background about what led us to release the NetEqualizer-Lite…Over the years, we’d had several customers express interest in placing a NetEqualizer as close as possible to their towers in order to relieve congestion. However, in many cases, this would require both a weatherproof and low-power NetEqualizer unit – two features that were not available up to this point. However, in the midst of a growing demand for this type of technology, we spent the last few months working to meet this need and thus developed the NetEqualizer-Lite.

Here’s what you can expect from the NetEqualizer–Lite:

  • Power over Ethernet
  • Up to 10 megabits of shaping
  • Up to 200 users
  • Comes complete with all standard NetEqualizer features

And, early feedback on the new release has been positive. Here’s what one user recently posted on DSLReports.com:

We’ve ordered 4 of these and deployed 2 so far. They work exactly like the 1U rackmount NE2000 that we have in our NOC, only the form factor is much smaller (about 6x6x1) and they use POE or a DC power supply. I amp clamped one of the units, and it draws about 7 watts….The Netequalizer has resulted in dramatically improved service to our customers. Most of the time, our customers are seeing their full bandwidth. The only time they don’t see it now is when they’re downloading big files. And, when they don’t see full performance, its only for the brief period that the AP is approaching saturation. The available bandwidth is re-evaulated every 2 seconds, so the throttling periods are often brief. Bottom line to this is that we can deliver significantly more data through the same AP. The customers hitting web pages, checking e-mail, etc. virtually always see full bandwidth, and the hogs don’t impact these customers. Even the hogs see better performance (although that wasn’t one of my priorities). (DSLReports.com)

Pricing for the new model will be $1,200 for existing NetEqualizer users and $1,550 for non-customers purchasing their first unit. However, the price for subsequent units will be $1,200 for users and nonusers alike.

For more information about the new release, contact us at admin@apconnections.net or 1-800-918-2763.

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What NetEqualizer Users Are Saying (updated June 2009)

May 2, 2009 — netequalizer

Editor’s Note: As NetEqualizer’s popularity has grown, more and more users have been sharing their experiences on message boards and listservs across the Internet. Just to give you an idea of what they’re saying, here a few of the reviews and discussion excerpts that have been posted online over the past several months…

Wade LeBeau — The Daily Journal Network Operations Manager

NetEqualizer is one of the most cost-effective management units on the market, and we found the unit easy to install—right out of the box. We made three setting changes to match our network using the web (browser) interface, connected the unit, and right away traffic shaping started, about 10minutes total setup time. The unit has two Ethernet ports…one port toward your user network, the other ports toward your broadband connection/server if applicable. A couple of simple clicks and you can see reporting live as it happens. In testing, we ran our unit for 30-days and saw our broadband reports stabilize and our users receiving the same slices of broadband access. With the NetEqualizer, there is no burden of extensive policies to manage….The NetEqualizer is a nice tool to add to any network of any size. Businesses can see how important the Internet is and how hungry users can be for information.

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DSL Reports, April 2009

The Netequalizer has resulted in dramatically improved service to our customers. Most of the time, our customers are seeing their full bandwidth. The only time they don’t see it now is when they’re downloading big files. And, when they don’t see full performance, its only for the brief period that the AP is approaching saturation. The available bandwidth is re-evaluated every 2 seconds, so the throttling periods are often brief.

Bottom line to this is that we can deliver significantly more data through the same AP. The customers hitting web pages, checking e-mail, etc. virtually always see full bandwidth, and the hogs don’t impact these customers. Even the hogs see better performance (although that wasn’t one of my priorities).

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Loyola University — Chicago

At Loyola University Chicago, we are on our 2nd iteration of the NetEqualizer. We used the product happily for a number of years when we had a T3. We upgraded our internet pipe to 100MB and after about 6 months we noticed 100% saturation and students complaining of slow internet for various applications. We knew then that we needed another NetEqualizer. Once we plugged the box in it started managing the bandwidth, our pipe has not been saturated since, and more importantly the complaints have ceased.

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Alan Leech, Orlean Invest West Africa Limited, January 24, 2009

Gentlemen

We purchased 3 of your devices last year and I have to say we are very impressed by them.

They have matched our requirement perfectly and allow us to provide fair usage to our clients whilst reducing our overall OPEX.

You can be sure we will be purchasing in the future.

Alan Leech

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Illinois Wesleyan Replaces Packeteer with NetEqualizer as Part of Bandwidth Upgrade, January 19, 2009

By tshort

Network Services has completed the Network Upgrade Project.  The Internet bandwidth available to the Campus was doubled from 45MBs (DS3) to 90MBs in December.  Along with the additional bandwidth, a new bandwidth sharing device call a NetEqualizer replaced the existing Packeteer.  The NetEqualizer uses bandwidth sharing fairness rules based on network usage to share bandwidth and balance the available bandwidth between all users.  The project made a dramatic improvement to Internet access for the campus community.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chris Chamberlain, Oakland University in Detroit

Doug,

Because Netequalizer simply makes things fair, i.e. gives everyone on the link the same percentage of the bandwidth “pie” the netequalizer can handle any type of traffic, because it isn’t classifying anything.

Chris Chamberlain

Oakland University

>On Apr 30, 2008, at 4:42 PM, Green, Doug wrote:

>We are considering Netequalizer. They are claiming to be able to manage  encrypted BitTorrent. Can anyone verify this?

>Thank you,

>Doug Green

>Manager, Network Services & Security

>University of New Hampshire

>50 College Rd

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Charlie Prothero, CIO, Keystone College

I have written on a couple of Educause lists about our experience with the Netequalizer, which has been invariably positive.  It’s a snap to set up and doesn’t require anywhere near the tuning effort that a Packeteer does.  For general Internet circuit coverage, I’m very pleased with it.

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Ben Schworm, The Independent School Educators’ List, ISED-L

We just re-evaluated our systems after realizing that even with the Packetshaper in place, we’d need to increase the amount of bandwidth that we offer the community. First of all, the new Packetshaper hardware we’d need was going to cost $18,000. Second, over the 5 years that we’ve had the Packetshaper, we’ve seen its effectiveness decrease with the increased availability and academic usage of real-time streaming apps and the increasing amount of traffic that is classified as either pure web browsing traffic (whether it is or not) or “default”, the traffic class that catches all the other traffic that the Packetshaper can’t specifically identify. Furthermore, the Packetshaper can tend to be a pretty admin-intensive system to keep working effectively.

The NetEqualizer really only deals with end-user behavior in that it looks at the bandwidth that a given user is trying to utilize relative to what’s available and throttles “bad” users in order to try to maintain fair access to the bandwidth. It also throttles “bad” applications like P2P that open many connections to and from a given user. The box is nearly configuration and maintenance-free and costs a fraction of what the Packetshaper does.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ed Loebach, UVMRESNET

I was asked to tell our experience with NetEqualizer. We purchased the box about 3 weeks into first semester when our old bandwidth control server died and support was not forthcoming from the company.

We put NetEqualizer in place and fired it up with little to no problem. For the first 5-6 hours it worked as we were told it would with NO configuration. After the first day we noticed problems with students exceeding the connection limits we set. We called the company and within 24 hours we had the configuration modified to the specific needs of our network and our bandwidth was under our control again.

In the last 4 months I have not had to make any additional changes to the configuration. In fact we have not even had the need to restart the box. The NetEqualizer box has some very good algorithms to have controlled our heavy bandwidth users with not adding significant network overhead to the rest of our low bandwidth users. Our students have seen an increase in bandwidth when they need it. The gamers are happy because the latency we used to have under our old bandwidth system has disappeared.

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Douglas Hedges, EDUCAUSE Small College Constituent Group Listserv

We’ve dumped our Packeteer device about 18 mos. ago for a NetEqualizer. It has worked as advertised and has required virtually no maintenance after initial setup (which took just a few minutes as well). There are some good technical papers on their site (http://www.netequalizer.com) describing its operation and comparing it to other products. I believe they’re worth a read if you want to see if it’s a good fit for your campus. It sure was for ours.

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Russ Leathe, EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv

Gordon College switched from Packeteer to netEQ a while ago. It works flawlessly and our daily management of bandwidth decreased significantly.

They also have a CALEA probe.

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Superdog, DSLReports.com

When you plug in the Neteq box, it doesn’t care about IP’s or what range it is on. You set the bandwidth maximum limit for whatever your pipe size is and then plug it inline between your core router and your first main switch and you are done…

…I love this unit and I can not say enough about it. With M0n0wall and Packetteer, you have to manually setup all of the rules in order for the units to be effective. After you spend a few hours getting them setup, it only takes the user/program 10 seconds to switch ports on you and that rule is then invalid and you need to go back and redo it.

This type of setup requires you to monitor your box constantly, creating even more work. The Neteq unit doesn’t need to know all of this. It just counts connections per user (A limit you set) and the amount of bandwidth each user consumes. If the bandwidth is there and no one else is using it, that person gets it. If they are running Limewire at full throttle and another user logs in and starts to surf the net?, that user gets full priority and their pages will load quickly while the Limewire download has delay added to their packets.

IMHO, using this unit is a no-brainer for any ISP. It is a hands off setup that really works.

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Josh Heller, Sr. Network Analyst — Information Technology, Kutztown University

Our University started with PacketShapers, but also made an investment in NetEqualizer when we found the PacketShaper wasn’t completely doing the job. Today we use both products.

We have been pleased with NetEqualizer  as it does what it advertises – it makes a noticeable difference in congested network.

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Nathan P. Hay, Network Engineer — Computer Services, Cedarville University

We switched from PacketShaper to NetEqualizer this summer.  NetEq is much simpler to manage and much cheaper.

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George Flowers, Flint River Tech

We currently have the NE2000, and it works great!  No other product can do what the NetEqualizer does at a great price!

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NetEqualizer Bandwidth Controller POE unit a hit with customers

May 2, 2009 — netequalizer

Editors Note:  Just pulled this post off of DSL reports.

NetEqualizer POE units list at $1499 and serve as a great QOS devise for the SOHO small business user.

We’ve ordered 4 of these and deployed 2 so far. They work exactly like the 1U rackmount NE2000 that we have in our NOC, only the form factor is much smaller (about 6x6x1) and they use POE or a DC power supply. I amp clamped one of the units, and it draws about 7 watts.

We have a number of remote APs where we don’t have the physical space and/or power sources (i.e., solar powered) to accommodate the full size Netequalizer. Also, because of our network topology, it makes sense to have these units close to the AP and not at our border. These units are the perfect solution for these locations.

Our service area is mostly in a forest, so have a number of Trango 900 Mhz APs. These units can cut through the trees well, but they only have about 2.5 Mbps available on them (they’re rated at 3 Mbps, but we’ve tested their actual throughput at 2.5 Mbps). We have our customers set for 768k, so it doesn’t take too many Youtube and Netflix streams to kill the performance on these APs. We were using Mikrotiks to throttle the customers (using bursting to give them about 10 minutes @768k, then throttling them to around 300k). While this helped to keep the bandwidth hogs from individually killing the performance, it sometimes made matters worse.

For example, if a customer started downloading some 2 GB file at 10:00pm, it would take them until 1:00pm the next day to finish. As such, they would have disrupted services in the morning and early afternoon. If we had given this customer their full 768k, they would have finished this download before 4:00am and would never have been a disruption.

With the Mikrotik solution, we also had too many times that there was less than 768k available for the next customer, because there were a number of customers locked at 300k tying up much of the bandwidth. So, the customer that was hitting the casual web page was seeing poor performance (as were the hogs). In general, I wasn’t happy with the service we were delivering.

The Netequalizer has resulted in dramatically improved service to our customers. Most of the time, our customers are seeing their full bandwidth. The only time they don’t see it now is when they’re downloading big files. And, when they don’t see full performance, its only for the brief period that the AP is approaching saturation. The available bandwidth is re-evaulated every 2 seconds, so the throttling periods are often brief.

Bottom line to this is that we can deliver significantly more data through the same AP. The customers hitting web pages, checking e-mail, etc. virtually always see full bandwidth, and the hogs don’t impact these customers. Even the hogs see better performance (although that wasn’t one of my priorities).

I didn’t tell any customers that I was deploying the Netequalizers. Without solicitation, I’ve had a number of them comment that the service seems faster lately. It sure is fun to hear unsolicited compliments…

The only tweak of significance I made to the default setup was to change the MOVING_AVG from 8 to 29 (it can be set higher, but you can’t do it in the web interface). This makes it so that the Netequalizer considers someone to be a hog when their average data rate over the last 29 seconds is greater than HOGMIN (which we’ve left at 12,000 – 96 kbps). Given that our customers are set for 768k, this means that they can burst at full rate for a little under 4 seconds before they are considered a hog (approximately 350 KiloBytes of data). The default setting of 8 would allow approximately 1 second at full bandwidth (a little under 100K). By making this change, almost all web pages would never be subject to throttling. It also makes it so that most bandwidth test servers will not see any throttling. The change makes us more at risk that we can peak out the AP (since less customers may be subject to throttling), but we’ve seen that the throttling usually kicks in long before we see that problem.

The only feature I’d like to see in these units is to have a “half duplex” mode. The Netequalizers have separate upload and download pools. This works fine for most ISPs using typical full duplex circuits. However, most hardware that WISPs use are half duplex. So, our Trangos have 2.5 Mbps available TOTAL of upload and download. In order to have the Netequalizer throttle well, I configured it so that the Trangos had 1.9 Mbps down and .6 Mbps up. I would prefer to have a single 2.5 Mbps pool that throttles only when download + upload approaches 2.5 Mbps. If we had this feature, we could move even more data through the Trangos

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Where are the safe tech jobs ?

April 13, 2009 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman, CTO, http://www.netequalizer.com

Art Reisman CTO www.netequalizer.com

Art Reisman

Article Type: Opinion

As the CEO of a small (yet growing) tech company in the current recession I often get calls from former colleagues working at larger corporations. Amidst their companies insincere rhetoric, inaction, and falling revenues, good people wait around wondering who will be next to get the ax.

The underlying problem at most of these companies is that they are continue to push products into a stagnant or declining market. The only way to have any relative security is to get on board with an industry or niche with solid growth potential.

So if your wondering where to turn for potential job security here are some tips that might help

Look for a company that is doing something with real value for society and not just jumping on the latest bandwagon.

1) Renewable energy is hot , and certainly a job in renewable energy is better than selling steam engines running off coal. Renewable energy, although here to stay is being over hyped . Right now the success of renewable energy is dependent on battery technology. Fossil fuels are nothing more than the Suns energy stored up and retrieved at will when needed. For renewable (wind, solar) energy is to compete easily with traditional fossil fuels we must come up with a clean effective battery to store energy. My advice seek out a company that specializes in battery technology and then help them make a difference.

2) Network and Internet Optimization

Internet Infrastructure companies are being forced by their stock holders to turn a profit. The days of free falling bandwidth contracts are slowing down, hence the new hot market will be companies with products that optimize internet bandwidth. Bandwidth control , WAN optimization and compression although not on the front pages, are areas of value and are holding their own in the recession. Some companies to look at , are

APconnection (NetEqualizer)

Packeteer

Allot

RiverBed

Exinda

3) Medical Technology,

From newer and better and MRI machines to prosthetics , Americans will spare no expense for anything that will make their lives more comfortable. So when will this party end and the associated demand for jobs in the Medical Industry flatten out?

Although I do not expect a crash in this field as we might have seen in other boom and bust industries, I do expect a slowdown. Every bubble has its end, and the Medical technology industry is due for a slow down. As consumers push back on medical care pricing, high end technology research will slow down. Still a better prospect than steam engines though.

4) Auto Industry

If you are entering into the field of Mechanical Engineering or electronics controls now would be a good time to focus on the Auto Industry. For the next 5 to 10 years I expect that auto makers will be looking for new innovative ideas in their engineering departments. They will also be looking for new talent. Don’t let the down turn discourage you this is an opportunity.

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Finally a Bandwidth Control appliance for under $1500

April 9, 2009 — netequalizer

Lafayette Colorado April 9th 2009

APconnections today Announced a small business bandwidth control device that  lists at $1499. (for single unit orders)

This new offer  handles up to 10 megabits and 100 users with room to spare for some expansion. It comes complete with all the standard features of the NetEqualizer, but in a smaller  low power format  with Power over Ethernet.

Demand for this new offer came from two sources

1) There was huge demand for an affordable traffic shaping device to  help small business run their VOIP concurrent with their data traffic over their internet link.

2) There was also a need  for a low end unit, with POE,  for the WISP market .

In  a large wireless network, congestion often occurs at tower locations.  With a low cost POE version of the NetEqualizer,  wireless providers can  now afford to have advanced bandwidth control at or near their Access distribution points.

According to Joe DeSopo from NetEqualizer, “About half of wireless network slowness comes from p2p (bittorrent)  and video users overloading the access points. We have had great success with our  NE2000 series  but the price point of $2500 was a bit too high to duplicate all over the network.”

For a small or medium sized office with a hosted VOIP PBX solution the NetEqualizer works like a genie in a bottle. It is one of the few products on the market that can provide QOS for voip over an Internet link. And now, with volume pricing approaching $1000,  it will help revolutions the way offices use their Internet connection.

The NetEqualizer is a plug-and-play bandwidth control and WAN/Internet optimization appliance that is flexible and scalable. When the network is congested, NetEqualizer’s unique “behavior shaping” technology gives priority to latency-sensitive applications, such as VoIP and email. It does it all dynamically and automatically, improving on other available bandwidth shaping technology. It controls network flow for the best WAN optimization.

APconnections is a privately held company founded in 2003 and is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

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Cisco Bandwidth Control for Education Networks

April 5, 2009 — netequalizer

The Cisco method is outlined below. However, you might also want to check out the NetEqualizer video filmed in front of the IT staffs at Eastern Michigan and Western Michigan Universities for a perspective on a simple alternate philosophy.

There is quite a bit of history with traffic classification  in the higher-ed market, so you can research some of the pros and cons of Layer 7 shaping before investing. You might also find some of these higher ed testimonials on the NetEqualizer worth reading.

The following was pulled from Cisco  marketing material specific to their bandwidth control solution for educational networks:

A fundamental requirement of any bandwidth control solution is the ability to apply QoS mechanisms. These mechanisms control the bandwidth of specific users and prioritize traffic to help ensure appropriate handling of delay-sensitive applications. QoS capabilities are essential for carrying delay-sensitive IP voice and video traffic over an institution’s ISP link, as well as for rate limiting recreational P2P traffic.
The Cisco SCE uses three levels of QoS:

Hierarchical bandwidth control: The Cisco SCE supports granular bandwidth control by allocating part of a link’s bandwidth for groups of specific application flows. Academic IT departments can define these groups according to categories such as “all P2P traffic,” “browsing and streaming traffic,” “all traffic flowing off net,” and so on. In addition, colleges and universities can use the Cisco SCE to enforce minimum and maximum bandwidth limits and priorities for the total traffic that is produced by a given user, as well as for the specific applications (browsing, gaming, and so on) in which the user engages. These advanced mechanisms are used in a tiered fashion.

Differentiated Services (DiffServ) queuing: Internet applications use DiffServ to help ensure that packets from delay-sensitive applications are prioritized over other packets. The Cisco SCE includes DiffServ-compliant transmit queues using “Best Effort Forwarding,” four levels of “Assured Forwarding,” and “Expedited Forwarding” for delay-sensitive applications.

DiffServ marking:  The Cisco SCE’s advanced classification capabilities can also be used for marking the IP type of service (ToS)/DiffServ codepoint (DSCP) byte of the associated traffic. Each flow or group of flows can be marked with a relevant DiffServ value based on the application or service. The next-hop Layer 3 device, such as a switch or router, then uses this marking to carry the delay-sensitive traffic appropriately. As a result, the Cisco SCE, crucial to the Cisco Bandwidth Control Solution, can serve as the ideal network element for classifying and marking application traffic for other DiffServ-enabled network elements.

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Canadians request comments on traffic shaping practices

April 1, 2009 — netequalizer

Art Reisman CTO www.netequalizer.com

I am not sure if this is open to Canadians only, but the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) has set up a site for comments regarding their policies on Internet traffic shaping. The site is open from now till April 30th and can be found at

http://isppractices.econsultation.ca/

So if you get the chance chime in and give them your thoughts.

For the fun of it (see below) I grabbed a few of the existing comments truely at random. After reading them it is funny how the consumer sentiments so far are in total agreement with what we NetEqualizer have been proselytizing  which is:  “Traffic management is fine as long as there is full disclosure of policies”. Nobody wants to pump gas without knowing the grade and the price and the same goes for their Internet service.

——————-comments—————————————————-

“Any traffic management practices deviating from complete network neutrality, that is to say, any practices that single out one protocol over another, should certainly be disclosed to the user in the service agreement. To disclose anything less would be consumer fraud.”

“Traffic management has a real impact on the product that a consumer is paying for. All ISPs are not created equal and consumers aren’t in a position to analyze the complexities of network management and the possible impacts on their usage.”

“All traffic shaping practices should be disclosed, in plain English, online and as a part of the terms of service.”

“I agree with the other posters thus far — if ISPs are allowed to get away with uncompetitive throttling of Internet traffic, those techniques and the effect on the customer should be fully disclosed in plain versions of both official languages.”

“Any new communication technologies can be thwarted if ISPs deem them to be competitive with any of their services, stifling innovation. Even the CBC has used BitTorrent to distribute programming, and..”

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5 Tips to speed up your business T1/DS3 to the Internet

March 30, 2009 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

Art Reisman CTO www.netequalizer.com

In tight times expanding your corporate Internet pipe is a hard pill to swallow, especially when your instincts tell you the core business should be able to live within the current allotment.

Here are some tips and hard facts that you  you may want to consider  to help stretch your business Internet pipe

1) Layer 7 application shaping.

The market place is crawling with solutions that allow you to set policies on bandwidth based on type of application.  Application shaping allows an administrator to restrict lower priority activities, while allowing mission critical Apps favorable consideration. This methodology is very seductive , but from our experience it can send your IT department into a nanny state, constantly trying to figure out what to allow and what to restrict. Also the cost of an Internet link expansion is dropping, while many of the application shaping solutions start around $10,000 and go up from there.

The up side is Layer 7 application shaping does work well when it comes to internal WAN links that do not carry Internet traffic. An administrator can get a handle on the fixed traffic running privately within their network quite easily.

2) Using your router to restrict specific IP and ports

If your core business utilization can be isolated to a single server or group of servers a few simple rules to allocate a large chunk of the pipe to these resources (by IP address) may be a good fit.

In an environment where business priorities change and are not isolated to a fixed server or two, this solution can backfire, but if your resource allocation requirements are stable doing something on your router to restrict one particular subnet over another can be useful in stretching your bandwidth.

One thing to be careful is that it often takes a skilled technician to set up specialty rules on your router. You can easilyu rack  up  $$ to your IT consultants if  your set up is not static.

3) Behavior based shaping

Editors note: We are the makers of the NetEqualizer which specializes in this technology; however our intent in this article is to be objective.

Behavior based shaping works well and affordably in most situations. Most business related applications will get priority as they tend to use small amounts of data or web pages.  Occasionally there are exceptions that need to override the basic behavior based shaping such as video.  Video can easily  be excluded from the generic policies.  Implementing a few exclusions is far less cumbersome than trying to classify all traffic all the time such as with application shaping.

4) Add more bandwidth and by pass your local loop carrier

T1’s and T3’s from your local telco may not be the only options for bandwidth in your area. Many of our customers get creative by purchasing bandwidth directly from a tier one provider (such as Level 3) and then using a Microwave back haul the bandwidth to their location. The Telco’s make a killing with what they call a loop charge (before they put any bandwidth on your line) With Microwave backhaul technology you can by-pass this charge for significant savings.

5) Clean up the laptops and computers on your network.  Many robots and viruses run in the background on your windows machines and can generate a cacophony of back ground traffic.  A business wide license for good virus protection may be worth the investment.  Stay away from the free ware versions of virus protection they tend to miss quite a bit.

Posted in Educational Articles, Network Speed. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

When is Deep Packet Inspection a Good Thing?

March 26, 2009 — netequalizer

Commentary

Update September 2011

Seems some shareholders  of a company who over promised layer 7 technology are not happy.

By Eli Riles

As many of our customers are aware, we publicly stated back in October 2008 that we officially had switched all of our bandwidth control solutions over to behavior-based shaping. Consequently, we  also completely disavowed Deep Packet Inspection in a move that has Ars Technica described as “vendor throws deep packet inspection under the bus.”

In the last few weeks, there has been a barrage of attacks on Deep Packet Inspection, and then a volley of PR supporting it from those implementing the practice.

I had been sitting on an action item to write something in defense of DPI, and then this morning I came across a pro-DPI blog post in the New York Times. The following excerpt is in reference to using DPI to give priority to certain types of traffic such as gaming:

“Some customers will value what they see as low priority as high priority,” he said. I asked Mr. Scott what he thought about the approach of Plusnet, which lets consumers pay more if they want higher priority given to their game traffic and downloads. Surprisingly, he had no complaints.

“If you said to me, the consumer, ‘You can choose what applications to prioritize and which to deprioritize, and, oh, by the way, prices will change as a result of how you do this,’ I don’t have a problem with that,” he said.

The key to this excerpt is the phrase, “IF YOU ASK THE CONSUMER WHAT THEY WANT.” This implies permission. If you use DPI as an opt-in , above-board technology, then obviously there is nothing wrong with it. The threat to privacy is only an issue if you use DPI without consumer knowledge. It should not be up to the provider to decide appropriate use of DPI,  regardless of good intent.

The quickest way to deflate the objections  of the DPI opposition is to allow consumers to choose. If you subscribe to a provider that allows you to have higher priority for certain application, and it is in their literature, then by proxy you have granted permission to monitor your traffic. I can still see the Net Neutrality purist unhappy with any differential service, but realistically I think there is a middle ground.

I read an article the other day where a defender of DPI practices (sorry no reference) pointed out how spam filtering is widely accepted and must use DPI techniques to be effective. The part the defender again failed to highlight was that most spam filtering is done as an opt-in with permission. For example, the last time I checked my Gmail account, it gave the option to turn the spam filter off.

In sum, we are fully in support of DPI technology when the customer is made aware of its use and has a choice to opt out. However, any use of DPI done unknowingly and behind the scenes is bound to create controversy and may even be illegal. The exception would be a court order for a legal wiretap. Therefore, the Deep Packet Inspection debate isn’t necessarily a black and white case of two mutually exclusive extremes of right and wrong. If done candidly, DPI can be beneficial to both the Internet user and provider.

See also what is deep packet inspection.

Eli Riles, a consultant for APconnections (Netequalizer), is a retired insurance agent from New York. He is a self-taught expert in network infrastructure. He spends half the year traveling and visiting remote corners of the earth. The other half of the year you’ll find him in his computer labs testing and tinkering with the latest network technology.

For questions or comments, please contact him at eliriles@yahoo.com.

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Commentary and Editorials. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »
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