Complimentary NetEqualizer Bandwidth Management Seminar in the UK

April 9, 2015 — netequalizer

Press Release issued via BusinessWire.

April 08, 2015 01:05 AM Mountain Daylight Time

LAFAYETTE, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–APconnections, an innovation-driven technology company that delivers best-in-class network traffic management solutions, is excited to announce its upcoming complimentary NetEqualizer Technical Seminar on April 23rd, 2015, in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, hosted by Flex Information Technology Ltd.

This is not a marketing presentation; it is run by and created for technical staff.

Join us to meet APconnections’ CTO Art Reisman, a visionary in the bandwidth management industry (check out Art’s blog). This is not a marketing presentation; it is run by and created for technical staff. The Seminar will feature in-depth, example-driven discussions of network optimization and provide participants with a first-hand look at NetEqualizer technology.

Seminar highlights include:

  • Learn how behavior-based shaping provides superior QoS for Internet traffic
  • Optimize business-critical VoIP, email, web browsing, SaaS & web applications
  • Control excessive bandwidth use by non-priority applications
  • Gain control over P2P traffic
  • Get visibility into your network with real-time reporting
  • See the NetEqualizer in action! We will demo a live system.

We welcome both customers and those just beginning to think about bandwidth shaping. The Seminar will take place at 14:30pm, Thursday, April 23rd, at Flex Information Technology Ltd in Grove Technology Park, Wantage, Oxfordshire OX12 9FF.

Online registration, including location and driving directions, is available here. There is no cost to attend, but registration is requested. Questions? Contact Paul Horseman at paul@flex.co.uk or call +44(0)333.101.7313.

About Flex Information Technology Ltd
Flex Information Technology is a partnership founded in 1993 to provide maintenance and support services to wide range of customers with large mission critical systems, particularly the Newspaper and Insurance sectors. In 1998 the company began focusing on support for small to medium businesses. Today we provide “Smart IT Solutions combined with Flexible and Quality Services for Businesses” to a growing satisfied customer base. We have accounts with leading IT suppliers and hardware and software distributors in the UK.

About APconnections
APconnections is a privately held company founded in 2003 and is based in Lafayette, Colorado, USA. Our flexible and scalable network traffic management solutions can be found at thousands of customer sites in public and private organizations of all sizes across the globe, including: Fortune 500 companies, major universities, K-12 schools, Internet providers, libraries, and government agencies on six continents.

Contacts

APconnections, Inc.
Sandy McGregor, 303-997-1300 x104
sandym@apconnections.net
or
Flex Information Technology Ltd
Paul Horseman, +44(0)333 101 7313
paul@flex.co.uk

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Your heard it here first, our prediction on how video will evolve to conserve bandwidth

May 8, 2013 — netequalizer

Editors Note:

I suspect somebody out there has already thought of this,  but in my quick internet search I could not find any references to this specific idea, so I am takaing journalistic first  claim unofficial first rights to this idea.

The best example I think of to exemplify efficiency in video, are the old style cartoons,  such as the parody of South Park. If you ever watch south park animation,  the production quality  is done deliberately cheesy, very few moving parts with fixed backgrounds. In the South Park case, the intention was obviously not to save production costs.  The cheap animation is part of the comedy. That was not always the case,  the evolution of this sort of stop animation cartoon was from the early days  before computer animation took over the work of human artists working frame by frame. The fewer moving parts in a scene, the less work for the animator.  They could re-use existing drawings of a figure and just change the orientation of the mouth in perhaps three positions to animate talking.

Modern video compression tries to take advantage of some of the inherit static data from image to image , such that, each new frame is transmitted with less information.  At best, this is a hit or miss proposition.  There are likely many frivolous moving parts in a back ground that perhaps on the small screen of hand held device are not necessary.

My prediction is we will soon see a collaboration between production of video and Internet transport providers that allows for the average small device video production to have a much smaller footprint in transit.

Some of the basics of this technique would involve.

1) deliberately blurring or sending a background separate from the action. Think of a wide shot of break away lay-up in a basketball game. All you really need to see is the player and the basket in the frame the brain is going to ignore background details such as the crowd, they might as well be static character animations, especially on the scale of the screen of your Iphone not the same experience as your 56 inch HD flat screen.

2) Many of the videos in circulation the internet are news casts of a talking head giving the latest headlines. If you wanted to be extreme, you could  make the production such that the head is  tiny and animate it like a south park character,  this will take a much smaller footprint but technically still be video, and it would be much more like to play through without pausing.

3) The content sender can actually send a different production of the same video for low-bandwidth clients.

Note the reason why the production side of the house must get involved with the compression and delivery side of video is that the compression engines can only make assumptions on what is important and what is not, when removing information (pixels) from a video.

With a smart production engine geared toward the Internet, there is big savings here. Video is busting out all over the Internet and conserving from a production side only makes sense if you want to get your content deployed and viewed everywhere .

The security industry also does something similar taking advantage with fixed cameras on fixed backgrounds.

Related How much YouTube can the Internet Handle

Related Out of the box ideas on how to speed up your Internet

Blog dedicated to video compression, Euclid Discoveries.

 

 

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Educational Articles, Research. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

How Much Bandwidth Do You Really Need?

February 17, 2013 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman – CTO – www.netequalizer.com

Art Reisman CTO www.netequalizer.com

When it comes to how much money to spend on the Internet, there seems to be this underlying feeling of guilt with everybody I talk to. From ISPs, to libraries or multinational corporations, they all have a feeling of bandwidth inadequacy. It is very similar to the guilt I used to feel back in College when I would skip my studies for some social activity (drinking). Only now it applies to bandwidth contention ratios. Everybody wants to know how they compare with the industry average in their sector. Are they spending on bandwidth appropriately, and if not, are they hurting their institution, will they become second-rate?

To ease the pain, I was hoping to put a together a nice chart on industry standard recommendations, validating that your bandwidth consumption was normal, and I just can’t bring myself to do it quite yet. There is this elephant in the room that we must contend with. So before I make up a nice chart on recommendations, a more relevant question is… how bad do you want your video service to be?

Your choices are:

  1. bad
  2. crappy
  3. downright awful

Although my answer may seem a bit sarcastic, there is a truth behind these choices. I sense that much of the guilt of our customers trying to provision bandwidth is based on the belief that somebody out there has enough bandwidth to reach some form of video Shangri-La; like playground children bragging about their father’s professions, claims of video ecstasy are somewhat exaggerated.

With the advent of video, it is unlikely any amount of bandwidth will ever outrun the demand; yes, there are some tricks with caching and cable on demand services, but that is a whole different article. The common trap with bandwidth upgrades is that there is a false sense of accomplishment experienced before actual video use picks up. If you go from a network where nobody is running video (because it just doesn’t work at all), and then you increase your bandwidth by a factor of 10, you will get a temporary reprieve where video seems reliable, but this will tempt your users to adopt it as part of their daily routine. In reality you are most likely not even close to meeting the potential end-game demand, and 3 months later you are likely facing another bandwidth upgrade with unhappy users.

To understand the video black hole, it helps to compare the potential demand curve pre and post video.

A  quality VOIP call, which used to be the measuring stick for decent Internet service runs about 54kbs. A quality  HD video stream can easily consume about 40 times that amount. 

Yes, there are vendors that claim video can be delivered at 250kbs or less, but they are assuming tiny little stop action screens.

Couple this tremendous increase in video stream size with a higher percentage of users that will ultimately want video, and you would need an upgrade of perhaps 60 times your pre-video bandwidth levels to meet the final demand. Some of our customers, with big budgets or government subsidized backbones, are getting close but, most go on a honeymoon with an upgrade of 10 times their bandwidth, only to end up asking the question, how much bandwidth do I really need?

So what is an acceptable contention ratio?

  • Typically in an urban area right now we are seeing anywhere from 200 to 400 users sharing 100 megabits.
  • In a rural area double that rati0 – 400 to 800 sharing 100 megabits.
  • In the smaller cities of Europe ratios drop to 100 people or less sharing 100 megabits.
  • And in remote areas served by satellite we see 40 to 50 sharing 2 megabits or less.
Posted in Bandwidth Management, Educational Articles, Research. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

How to Determine the True Speed of Video over Your Internet Connection

August 23, 2012 — netequalizer

Art Reisman CTO www.netequalizer.com

Editor’s note: Art Reisman is the CTO of APconnections. APconnections designs and manufactures the popular NetEqualizer bandwidth shaper.

More and more, Internet Service Providers are using caching techniques on a large scale to store local copies of Netflix Movies and YouTube videos. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this technology. In fact, without it, your video service would likely be very sporadic. When a video originates on your local provider’s caching server, it only has to make a single hop to get to your doorstep. Many cable operators now have dedicated wires from their office to your neighborhood, and hence very little variability in the speed of your service on this last mile.

So how fast can you receive video over the Internet? (Video that is not stored on your local providers caching servers.) I suppose this question would be moot if all video known to mankind was available from your ISP. In reality, they only store a tiny fraction of what is available on their caching servers. The reason why caching can be so effective is that, most consumers only watch a tiny fraction of what is available, and they tend to watch what is popular. To determine how fast you can receive video over the Internet you must by-pass your providers cache.

To insure that you are running a video from beyond your providers cache, google something really obscure. Like “Chinese language YouTube on preparing flowers.” Don’t use this search term if you are in a Chinese neighborhood, but you get the picture right? Search for something obscure that is likely never watched near you. Pick a video 10 minutes or longer, and then watch it. The video may get broken up, or more subtly you may notice the buffer bar falls behind or barely keeps up with the playing of the video. In any case, if you see a big difference watching an obscure video over a popular one, this will be one of the best ways to analyze your true Internet speed.

Note: Do not watch the same video twice in a row when doing this test. The second time you watch an obscure video from China, it will likely run from the your provider’s cache, thus skewing the experiment.

Posted in Bandwidth Management, Commentary and Editorials. Tags: , , . 7 Comments »

Ten Things You Can Do With Our $999 Bandwidth Controller

May 15, 2012 — netequalizer

Why are we doing this?

In the last few years, bulk bandwidth prices have plummeted. The fundamentals for managing bandwidth have also changed. Many of our smaller customers, businesses with 50 to 300 employees, are upgrading their old 10 megabit circuits with 50 Megabit  links at no extra cost. There seems to be some sort of bandwidth fire sale going on…

Is there a catch?

The only restriction on the Lite unit (when compared to the NE2000) is the number of users it can handle at one time. It is designed for smaller networks. It has all the features and support of the higher-end NE2000. For those familiar with our full-featured product, you do not lose anything.

Here are ten things you can still do with our $999 Bandwidth Controller

1) Provide priority for VOIP and Skype on an MPLS link.

2) Full use of Bandwidth Pools. This is our bandwidth restriction by subnet feature and can be used to ease congestion on remote Access Points.

3) Implement bandwidth restrictions by quota.

4) Have full graphical reporting via NTOP reporting integration.

5) Automated priority via equalizing for low-bandwidth activities such as web browsing, using Citrix terminal emulation, and web applications (database queries).

6) Priority for selected video stations.

7) Basic Rate limits by IP, or MAC address.

8) Limit P2P traffic.

9) Automatically email customers on bandwidth overages.

10) Sleep well at night knowing your network will run smoothly during peak usage.

Are Bandwidth Controllers still relevant?

Dirt cheap bandwidth upgrades are good for consumers, but not for expensive bandwidth controllers on the market. For some products in excess of  $50,000, this might be the beginning of the end. We are fortunate to have built a lean company with low overhead. We rely mostly on a manufacturer-direct market channel, and this is greatly reduces our cost of sale. From experience, we know that even with higher bandwidth amounts, letting your customers run wide-open is still going to lead to trouble in the form of congested links and brownouts. 

As bandwidth costs drop, the Bandwidth Controller component of your network is not going to go away, but it must also make sense in terms of cost and ease of use. The next generation bandwidth controller must be full-featured while also competing with lower bandwidth prices. With our new low-end models, we will continue to make the purchase of our equipment a “no brainer” in value offered for your dollar spent.

There is nothing like our Lite Unit on the market delivered with support and this feature set at this price point. Read more about the features and specifications of our NetEqualizer Lite in our  NetEqualizer Lite Data Sheet.

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Five Tips to Manage Network Congestion

October 29, 2010 — netequalizer

As the demand for Internet access continues to grow around the world, the complexity of planning, setting up, and administering your network grows. Here are five (5) tips that we have compiled, based on discussions with network administrators in the field.

#1) Be Smart About Buying Bandwidth
The local T1 provider does not always give you the lowest price bandwidth.  There are many Tier 1 providers out there that may have fiber within line-of-sight of your business. For example, Level 3 has fiber rings already hot in many metro areas and will be happy to sell you bandwidth. To get a low-cost high-speed link to your point of presence, numerous companies can set up your wireless network infrastructure.

#2) Manage Expectations
You know the old saying “under promise and over deliver”.  This holds true for network offerings.  When building out your network infrastructure, don’t let your network users just run wide open. As you add bandwidth, you need to think about and implement appropriate rate limits/caps for your network users.  Do not wait; the problem with waiting is that your original users will become accustomed to higher speeds and will not be happy with sharing as network use grows – unless you enforce some reasonable restrictions up front.  We also recommend that you write up an expectations document for your end users “what to expect from the network” and post it on your website for them to reference.

#3) Understand Your Risk Factors
Many network administrators believe that if they set maximum rate caps/limits for their network users, then the network is safe from locking up due to congestion. However, this is not the case.  You also need to monitor your contention ratio closely.  If your network contention ratio becomes unreasonable, your users will experience congestion aka “lock ups” and “freeze”. Don’t make this mistake.

This may sound obvious, but let me spell it out. We often run into networks with 500 network users sharing a 20-meg link. The network administrator puts in place two rate caps, depending on the priority of the user  — 1 meg up and down for user group A and 5 megs up and down for user group B.  Next, they put rate caps on each group to ensure that they don’t exceed their allotted amount. Somehow, this is supposed to exonerate the network from experiencing contention/congestion. This is all well and good, but if you do the math, 500 network users on a 20 meg link will overwhelm the network at some point, and nobody will then be able to get anywhere close to their “promised amount.”

If you have a high contention ratio on your network, you will need something more than rate limits to prevent lockups and congestion. At some point, you will need to go with a layer-7 application shaper (such as Blue Coat Packeteer or Allot NetEnforcer), or go with behavior-based shaping (NetEqualizer). Your only other option is to keep adding bandwidth.

#4) Decide Where You Want to Spend Your Time
When you are building out your network, think about what skill sets you have in-house and those that you will need to outsource.  If you can select network applications and appliances that minimize time needed for set-up, maintenance, and day-to-day operations, you will reduce your ongoing costs. This is true whether your insource or outsource, as there is an “opportunity cost” for spending time with each network toolset.

#5) Use What You Have Wisely
Optimize your existing bandwidth.   Bandwidth shaping appliances can help you to optimize your use of the network.   Bandwidth shapers work in different ways to achieve this.  Layer-7 shapers will allocate portions of your network to pre-defined application types, splitting your pipe into virtual pipes based on how you want to allocate your network traffic.  Behavior-based shaping, on the other hand, will not require predefined allocations, but will shape traffic based on the nature of the traffic itself (latency-sensitive, short/bursty traffic is prioritized higher than hoglike traffic).   For known traffic patterns on a WAN, Layer-7 shaping can work very well.  For unknown patterns like Internet traffic, behavior-based shaping is superior, in our opinion.

On Internet links, a NetEqualizer bandwidth shaper will allow you to increase your customer base by between 10 to 30 percent without having to purchase additional bandwidth. This allows you to increase the amount of people you can put into your infrastructure without an expensive build out.

In order to determine whether the return-on-investment (ROI) makes sense in your environment, use our ROI tool to calculate your payback period on adding bandwidth control to your network.  You can then compare this one-time cost with your expected recurring month costs of additional bandwidth.  Also note in many cases you will need to do both at some point.  Bandwidth shaping can delay or defer purchasing additional bandwidth, but with growth in your network user base, you will eventually need to consider purchasing more bandwidth.

In Summary…
Obviously, these five tips are not rocket science, and some of them you may be using already.  We offer them here as a quick guide & reminder to help in your network planning.  While the sea change that we are all seeing in internet usage (more on that later…) makes network administration more challenging every day, adequate planning can help to prepare your network for the future.

Created by APconnections, 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 dynamically and automatically gives priority to latency sensitive applications, such as VoIP and email. Click here to request a full price list.

Posted in Educational Articles, Network Capacity. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Network Capacity Planning: Is Your Network Positioned for Growth?

October 18, 2010 — netequalizer

Authored by:  Sandy McGregor, Director of Sales & Marketing for APConnections, Inc.
Sandy has a Masters in Management Information Systems and over 17 years experience in the Applications Development Life Cycle.  In the past, she has been a Project Manager for large-scale data center projects, as well as a Director heading up architecture, development and operations teams.  In Sandy’s current role at APConnections, she is responsible for tracking industry trends.

As you may have guessed, mobile users are gobbling up network bandwidth in 2010!  Based on research conducted in the first half of 2010, Allot Communications has released The Allot MobileTrends Report , H1 2010 showing dramatic growth in mobile data bandwidth usage in 2010- up 68% in Q1 and Q2.

I am sure that you are seeing the impacts of all this usage on your networks.  The good news is all this usage is good for your business, as a network provider,  if you are positioned to grow to meet the needs of all this growth!  Whether you sell network usage to customers (as a ISP or WISP) or “sell” it internally (colleges and corporations), growth means that the infrastructure you provide becomes more and more critical to your business.

Here are some areas that we found of particular interest in the article, and their implications on your network, from our perspective…

1) Video Streaming grew by 92% to 35% of mobile use

It should be no surprise that video steaming applications take up a 35% share of mobile bandwidth, and grew by 92%.  At this growth rate, which we believe will continue and grow even faster in the future, your network capacity will need to grow as well.  Luckily, bandwidth prices are continuing to come down in all geographies.

No matter how much you partition your network using a bandwidth shaping strategy, the fact is that video streaming takes up a lot of bandwidth.  Add to that the fact that more and more users are using video, and you have a full pipe before you know it!  While you can look at ways to cache video, we believe that you have no choice but to add bandwidth to your network.

2) Users are downloading like crazy!

When your customers are not watching videos, they are downloading, either via P2P or HTTP, which combined represented 31 percent of mobile bandwidth, with an aggregate growth rate of 80 percent.  Although additional network capacity can help somewhat here, large downloads or multiple P2P users can still quickly clog your network.

You need to first determine if you want to allow P2P traffic on your network.  If you decide to support P2P usage, you may want to think how you will identify which users are doing P2P and if you will charge a premium for this service. Also, be aware that encrypted P2P traffic is on the rise, which makes it difficult to figure out what traffic is truly P2P.

Large file downloads need to be supported.  Your goal here should be to figure out how to enable downloading for your customers without slowing down other users and bringing the rest of your network to a halt.

In our opinion, P2P and downloading is an area where you should look at bandwidth shaping solutions.  These technologies use various methods to prioritize and control traffic, such as application shaping (Allot, BlueCoat, Cymphonix) or behavior-based shaping (NetEqualizer).

These tools, or various routers (such as Mikrotik), should also enable you to set rate limits on your user base, so that no one user can take up too much of your network capacity.  Ideally, rate limits should be flexible, so that you can set a fixed amount by user, group of users (subnet, VLAN), or share a fixed amount across user groups.

3) VoIP and IM are really popular too

The second fastest growing traffic types were VoIP and Instant Messaging (IM).  Note that if your customers are not yet using VoIP, they will be soon.  The cost model for VoIP just makes it so compelling for many users, and having one set of wires if an office configuration is attractive as well (who likes the tangle of wires dangling from their desk anyways?).

We believe that your network needs to be able to handle VoIP without call break-up or delay.  For a latency-sensitive application like VoIP, bandwidth shaping (aka traffic control, aka bandwidth management) is key.  Regardless of your network capacity, if your VoIP traffic is not given priority, call break up will occur.  We believe that this is another area where bandwidth shaping solutions can help you.

IM on the other hand, can handle a little latency (depending on how fast your customers type & send messages).  To a point, customers will tolerate a delay in IM – but probably 1-2 seconds max.  After that,they will blame your network, and if delays persist, will look to move to another network provider.

In summary, to position your network for growth:

1) Buy More Bandwidth – It is a never-ending cycle, but at least the cost of bandwidth is coming down!

2) Implement Rate Limits – Stop any one user from taking up your whole network.

3) Add Bandwidth Shaping – Maximize what you already have.  Think efficiency here.  To determine the payback period on an investment in the NetEqualizer, try our new ROI tool.  You can put together similar calculations for other vendors.

Note:  The Allot MobileTrends Report data was collected from Jan. 1 to June 30 from leading mobile operators worldwide with a combined user base of 190 million subscribers.

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NetEqualizer Bandwidth Shaping Solution: Business Centers

February 10, 2010 — netequalizer

In working with numerous Business Center network administrators, we have heard the same issues and challenges repeatedly. Here are just a few:

Download Business Centers White Paper

  • We need to do more with less bandwidth.
  • We need a solution that’s low cost, low maintenance, and easy to set up.
  • We need to support selling fixed bandwidth to our customers, by office and/or user.
  • We need to be able to report on subscriber usage.
  • We need to increase user satisfaction and reduce network troubleshooting calls

In this article, we’ll talk about how the NetEqualizer has been used to solve these issues for many Business Centers around the world.

Download article (PDF) Business Centers White Paper

Read full article …

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NetEqualizer Bandwidth Shaping Solution: Telecom, Satellite Systems, Cable, and Wired and Wireless ISPs

February 5, 2010 — netequalizer

In working with Internet providers around the world, we’ve repeatedly heard the same issues and challenges facing network administrators. Here are just a few:

Download ISP White Paper

  • We need to support selling fixed bandwidth to our customers.
  • We need to be able to report on subscriber usage.
  • We need the ability to increase subscriber ratio, or not have a subscriber cutback, before having to buy more bandwidth.
  • We need to meet the varying needs of all of our users.
  • We need to manage P2P traffic.
  • We need to give VoIP traffic priority.
  • We need to make exemptions for customers routing all of their traffic through VPN tunnels.
  • We need a solution that’s low cost, low maintenance, and easy to set up.
  • We need a solution that will grow with our network.
  • We need a solution that will meet CALEA requirements.

In this article, we will talk about how the NetEqualizer has been used to solve these issues for Internet providers worldwide.

Download article (PDF) ISP White Paper

Read full article …

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NetEqualizer Bandwidth Shaping Solution: Libraries

February 4, 2010 — netequalizer

In working with libraries across the country, we have heard the same issues and challenges repeatedly from network administrators.  Here are just a few:

Download Library White Paper

  • We need to meet the varying needs of all of our patrons while keeping the network truly open to the public.
  • We need to ensure access to our online resources for remote users (online catalogs, databases, etc.).
  • We need to do more with less bandwidth.
  • We need a solution that’s low cost, low maintenance, and easy to set up.
  • We need a solution that will grow with our network.

In this article, we’ll talk about how the NetEqualizer has been used to solve these issues for many libraries around the world.

Download article (PDF) Library White Paper

Read full article …

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NetEqualizer Bandwidth Shaping Solution: Colleges, Universities, Boarding Schools, and University Housing

December 15, 2009 — netequalizer

In working with information technology leaders at universities, colleges, boarding schools, and university housing over the years, we’ve repeatedly heard the same issues and challenges facing network administrators.  Here are just a few:

Download College & University White Paper

  • We need to provide 24/7 access to the web in the dormitories.
  • We need to support multiple campuses (and WAN connections between campuses).
  • We have thousands of students, and hundreds of administrators and professors, all sharing the same pipe.
  • We need to give priority to classroom videos used for educational purposes.
  • Our students want to play games and watch videos (e.g. YouTube).
  • We get calls if instant messaging & email are not responding instantaneously.
  • We need to manage P2P traffic.

In this article, we’ll talk about how the NetEqualizer has been used to solve these issues for many private and public colleges, universities, boarding schools, and in university housing facilities around the world.

Download article (PDF) College & University White Paper

Read full article …

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$1000 Discount Offered Through NetEqualizer Cash For Conversion Program

August 3, 2009 — netequalizer

After witnessing the overwhelming popularity of the government’s Cash for Clunkers new car program, we’ve decided to offer a similar deal to potential NetEqualizer customers. Therefore, this week, we’re announcing the launch of our Cash for Conversion program.The program offers owners of select brands (see below) of network optimization technology a $1000 credit toward the list-price purchase of NetEqualizer NE2000-10 or higher models (click here for a full price list). All owners have to do is send us your old (working or not) or out of license bandwidth control technology. Products from the following manufacturers will be accepted:

  • Exinda
  • Packeteer/Blue Coat
  • Allot
  • Cymphonics
  • Procera

In addition to receiving the $1000 credit toward a NetEqualizer, program participants will also have the peace of mind of knowing that their old technology will be handled responsibly through refurbishment or electronics recycling programs.

Only the listed manufacturers’ products will qualify. Offer good through the Labor Day weekend (September 7, 2009). For more information, contact us at 303-997-1300 or admin@apconnections.net.

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The True Price of Bandwidth Monitoring

July 16, 2009 — netequalizer

By Art Reisman

Art Reisman CTO www.netequalizer.com

For most IT administrators, bandwidth monitoring of some sort is an essential part of keeping track of, as well as justifying, network expenses. Without visibility into a network load, an administrator’s job would degrade into a quagmire of random guesswork. Or would it?

The traditional way of  looking at monitoring your Internet has two parts: the fixed cost of the monitoring tool used to identify traffic, and the labor associated with devising a remedy. In an ironic inverse correlation, we assert that costs increase with the complexity of the monitoring tool. Obviously, the more detailed the reporting tool, the more expensive its initial price tag. The kicker comes with part two. The more expensive the tool, the more  detail  it will provide, and the more time an administrator is likely to spend adjusting and mucking, looking for optimal performance.

But, is it a fair to assume higher labor costs with  more advanced monitoring and information?

Well, obviously it would not make sense to pay more for an advanced tool if there was no intention of doing anything with the detailed information it provides. Why have the reporting tool in the first place if the only output was to stare at reports and do nothing? Typically, the more information an admin has about a network, the more inclined he might be to spend time making adjustments.

On a similar note, an oversight often made with labor costs is the belief  that when  the work needed to adjust the network comes to fruition, the associated adjustments can remain statically in place. However, in reality, network traffic changes constantly, and thus the tuning so meticulously performed on Monday may be obsolete by Friday.

Does this mean that the overall productivity of using a bandwidth tool is a loss? Not at all. Bandwidth monitoring and network mucking can certainly result in a cost-effective solution. But, where is the tipping point? When does a monitoring solution create more costs than it saves?

A review of recent history reveals that technologies with a path similar to bandwidth monitoring have become commodities and shunned the overhead of most human intervention.  For example, computer operators disappeared off the face of the earth with the invention of cheaper computing in the late 1980’s.  The function of a computer operator did not disappear completely, it just got automated and rolled into the computer itself. The point is, anytime the cost of a resource is falling, the attention and costs used to manage it should be revisited.

An effective compromise with many of our customers is that they are stepping down from expensive complex reporting tools to a simpler approach. Instead of trying to determine every type of traffic on a network by type, time of day, etc., an admin can spot trouble by simply checking overall usage numbers once a week or so. With a basic bandwidth control solution in place (such as a NetEqualizer), the acute problems of a network locking up will go away, leaving what we would call only “chronic” problems, which may need to be addressed eventually, but do not require immediate action.

For example, with a simple reporting tool you can plot network usage by user.  Such a report, although limited in detail, will often reveal a very distinct bell curve of usage behavior. Most users will be near the mean, and then there are perhaps one or two percent of users that will be well above the mean. You don’t need a fancy tool to see what they are doing; abuse becomes obvious just looking at the usage (a simple report).

However, there is also the personal control factor, which often does not follow clear lines of ROI (return on investment).

What we have experienced when proposing a more hands-off model to network management is that a customer’s comfort depends on their bias for needing to know, which is an unquantifiable personal preference. Even in a world where bandwidth is free, it is still human nature to want to know specifically what bandwidth is being used for, with detailed information regarding the type of traffic. There is nothing wrong with this desire, but we wonder how strong it might be if the savings obtained from using simpler monitoring tools were converted into a trip to Hawaii.

In our next article, we’ll put some real world numbers to the test for actual break downs, so stay tuned. In the mean time, here are some other articles on bandwidth monitoring that we recommend. And, don’t forget to take our poll.

List of monitoring tools compiled by Stanford

Planetmy
Linux Tips
How to set up a monitor for free

Created by APconnections, 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 dynamically and automatically gives priority to latency sensitive applications, such as VoIP and email. Click here for a full price list.

Posted in Bandwidth Monitoring, Educational Articles, ROI. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

APconnections Announces NetEqualizer Lifetime Buyer Protection Policy

July 15, 2009 — netequalizer

This week, we announced the launch of the NetEqualizer Lifetime Buyer Protection Policy. In the event of an un-repairable failure of a NetEqualizer unit at any time, or in the event that it is time to retire a unit, customers will have the option to purchase a replacement unit and apply a 50-percent credit of their original unit purchase price, toward the new unit.  For current pricing see register for our price list.  This includes units that are more than three years old (the expected useful life for hardware) and in service at the time of failure.

For example, if you purchased a unit in 2003 for $4000 and were looking to replace it or upgrade with a newer model, APconnections would kick in a $2000 credit toward the replacement purchase.

The Policy will be in addition to the existing optional yearly NetEqualizer Hardware Warranty (NHW), which offers customers cost-free repairs or replacement of any malfunctioning unit while NHW is in effect (read details on NHW).

Our decision to implement the policy was a matter of customer peace-of-mind rather than necessity. While the failure rate of any NetEqualizer unit is ultimately very low, we want customers to know that we stand behind our products – even if it’s several years down the line.

To qualify,

  • users must be the original owner of the NetEqualizer unit,
  • the customer must have maintained a support contract that has been current within last 18 months , lapses of support longer than 18 months will void our replacement policy
  • the unit must have been in use on your network at the time of failure.

Shipping is not included in the discounted price. Purchasers of the one-year NetEqualizer hardware warranty (NHW) will still qualify for full replacement at no charge while under hardware warranty.  Contact us for more details by emailing sales@apconnections.net, or calling 303.997.1300 x103 (International), or 1.888.287.2492 (US Toll Free).

Note: This Policy does not apply to the NetEqualizer Lite.

Posted in New Features, Support. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Deep Packet Inspection Abuse In Iran Raises Questions About DPI Worldwide

July 10, 2009 — netequalizer

Over the past few years, we at APconnections have made our feelings about Deep Packet Inspection clear, completely abandoning the practice in our NetEqualizer technology more than two years ago. While there may be times that DPI is necessary and appropriate, its use in many cases can threaten user privacy and the open nature of the Internet. And, in extreme cases, DPI can even be used to threaten freedom of speech and expression. As we mentioned in a previous article, this is currently taking place in Iran.

Although these extreme invasions of privacy are most likely not occurring in the United States, their existence in Iran is bringing increasing attention to the slippery slope that is Deep Packet Inspection. A July 10 Huffington Post article reads:

“Before DPI becomes more widely deployed around the world and at home, the U.S. government ought to establish legitimate criteria for authorizing the use such control and surveillance technologies. The harm to privacy and the power to control the Internet are so disturbing that the threshold for using DPI must be very high.The use of DPI for commercial purposes would need to meet this high bar. But it is not clear that there is any commercial purpose that outweighs the potential harm to consumers and democracy.”

This potential harm to the privacy and rights of consumers was a major factor behind our decision to discontinue the use of DPI in any of our technology and invest in alternative means for network optimization. We hope that the ongoing controversy will be reason for others to do the same.

Posted in Commentary and Editorials, News. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »
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