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.

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

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

Posted in Bandwidth Monitoring, Commentary and Editorials, Net Neutrality, News. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

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.
Posted in Press Releases, Testimonials. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

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.

Posted in New Features. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

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.

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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.

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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!

Posted in News, Testimonials. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

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 »

Hotel Property Managers Should Consider Generic Bandwidth Control Solutions

March 1, 2009 — netequalizer

Editors Note: The following Hotelsmag.com article caught my attention this morning. The hotel industry is now seriously starting to understand that they need some form of bandwidth control.   However, many hotel solutions for bandwidth control are custom marketed, which perhaps puts their economy-of-scale at a competitive disadvantage. Yet, the NetEqualizer bandwidth controller, as well as our competitors, cross many market verticals, offering hotels an effective solution without the niche-market costs. For example, in addition to the numerous other industries in which the NetEqualizer is being used, some of our hotel customers include: The Holiday Inn Capital Hill, a prominent Washington DC hotel; The Portola Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Monterrey, California; and the Hotel St. Regis in New York City.

For more information about the NetEqualizer, or to check out our live demo, visit www.netequalizer.com.

Heavy Users Tax Hotel Systems:Hoteliers and IT Staff Must Adapt to a New Reality of Extreme Bandwidth Demands

By Stephanie Overby, Special to Hotels — Hotels, 3/1/2009

The tweens taking up the seventh floor are instant-messaging while listening to Internet radio and downloading a pirated version of “Twilight” to watch later. The 200-person meeting in the ballroom has a full interactive multimedia presentation going for the next hour. And you do not want to know what the businessman in room 1208 is streaming on BitTorrent, but it is probably not a productivity booster.

To keep reading, click here.

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

NetEqualizer Bandwidth Control Tech Seminar Video Highlights

February 4, 2009 — netequalizer

Tech Seminar, Eastern Michigan University, January 27, 2009

This 10-minute clip was professionally produced January 27, 2009. It  gives a nice quick overview of how the NetEqualizer does bandwidth control while providing priority for VoIP and video.

The video specifically covers:

1) Basic traffic shaping technology and NetEqualizer’s behavior-based methods

2) Internet congestion and gridlock avoidance on a network

3) How peer-to-peer file sharing operates

4) How to counter the effects of peer-to-peer file sharing

5) Providing QoS and priority for voice and video on a network

6) A short comparison by a user (a university admin) who prefers NetEqualizer to layer-7 deep packet inspection techniques

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

NetEqualizer Evaluation Policy

October 1, 2008 — netequalizer

Our official policy for customers requesting evaluation units is to require payment upfront.  However, we do honor a no-questions-asked  30-day return policy.

As you can imagine, we get a constant stream of requests for evaluation units. Obviously we’d love to provide everybody who asks with a demo unit. After all, the other brand name packet shapers will throw them at you. Especially if you are coming from an account they want to win over.

So, you may be wondering why we don’t do the same…

Some background:

APconnections  sells quite a few units under $3000 dollars. To put this in perspective, last year a CEO from a larger competitor selling similar equipment admitted that $4000 is their break-even point.

So, how do we offer units starting at $2000 and still turn a profit?

A big part of our model to is make sure that we do not drill dry wells. Dry well is industry speak for pursuing business that will never materialize. Yes, we love chatting with people, but in order to pay our engineers and stay in business, we must limit money spent supporting customers that are just “looking”.  The easiest way to do this is to enforce our evaluation policy.

Serious customers that are ready to buy something but need to see it work in their network usually have no problem with purchasing up front.  Some, but not all, customers that are not agreeable to purchasing up front may have cash flow problems of their own. In an economy where banks do not know how to qualify loans, we don’t want  to try to calculate this risk.

The result of our conservative policy translates to much lower prices , and to date nobody is arguing with that.

Posted in New Features, Press Releases, Support. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

A Detailed Case Study of Packet Shaper and NetEqualizer

April 3, 2008 — netequalizer

Editors note:

The quote by the Adams State administrator sums it up.

 "The price is fair, the best value in the product space"

This is a re-post of the Adams state blog, the details are a bit technical which don’t reflect the actual simplicity of a basic setup. From box to Network it is usually under an hour, without little or no recurring maintenance.

http://faculty.adams.edu/~cdmiller/?TrafficShaping

Also note NTOP reporting issues were remedied shortly after this original post back in 2006.

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In May 2006 we switched bandwidth management products. We moved from traditional layer 7 traffic shaping to bandwidth arbitration. We looked at upgrading our current product and 3 other solutions.

I am convinced protocol and layer 7 based filtering is dead. I expect P2P products to use SSL or TLS bypassing layer 7 filters. Ethically layer 7 filtering smells like content filtering, big brother, evil.

Bandwidth arbitration keeps things simple. When the Internet connection reaches a tuneable level of utilization the arbitrator slows down longer lived higher usage data transfers based on the number of connections and their utilization. Per host connection limiting keeps P2P playing nicely.

The chosen product? Net Equalizer.

Based on the open source Bandwidth Arbitrator, it is easy to configure and highly customizable. Support has been excellent.

  • Initial Tests

With the netequalizer link size at ~20% below our average utilization our pipe remained completely usable. Interactive applications responded well while large transfers continued to function. The connection limits appear to keep bittorrent and gnutella functional and in control.

  • Qualitative Results 2006-06-23

Downloads are faster, latency is at pre layer 7 filtering levels (9ms vs 300ms), P2P protocols are usable again, and we no longer police content, we manage bandwidth. Support has been excellent with technicians responding directly to my emails with all technical levels of questions answered, good, silly, and questions about the inner workings of the appliance. I was instructed on cautions to take withe any attempt at customization, and given the go ahead for some minor custom configuration without voiding the warranty.

  • Update 2006-11-06

We have run the Netequalizer for 6 months. Results are phenomenal compared with our last product. Our Netequalizer box has been up for 116 days with no configuration changes from the start of the semester. I look at my Cacti graphs and the custom CGI reports for solace, as if I’m disappointed the appliance doesn’t need more care and feeding.

  • Our Configuration

For our 21Mb link, we set 3 basic parameters:

 RATIO 75
 BRAIN_SIZE 2500
 CONNECTION LIMIT 40

The ratio is the amount of of our pipe in use before any shaping (arbitration) takes place. The brain_size is the number of connections for the equalizer to track and act upon, I have seen this number reached only once on our system. The connection limit means we allow 20 incoming and 20 outgoing connections maximum for every host on our network. We had to set every one or our servers as an exception to this rule, allowing 50,000 incoming and outgoing connections for those. We also had to specify our link size. That’s it end of configuration.

  • Custom Modifications

We did very simple things to appease ourselves of the performance of the box. First, we placed an SNMP daemon on it. I used a stock snmpd from a Mandriva 2006 server, from net-snmp 5.2.1.2. I was going to static compile one, but it turned out the dynamic libraries were all in place, here is the ldd output:

     ldd /usr/local/snmp/sbin/snmpd
     linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
     libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0x4001b000)
     libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x4001f000)
     libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0x40031000)
     libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x40057000)
     /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

I put the daemon in /usr/local/snmp/sbin/ and the mibs and snmpd.conf in /usr/local/snmp/share/snmp/.

We created 2 custom CGI scripts. One script shows the complete current logfile on demand rather than the last however many lines the web interface shows. The other script shows total current connections, followed by a list of hosts with more than 3 connections, sorted by total outgoing and incoming connections. I modified some of the scripts provided in the /art directory to produce those results. Someone with more familiarity with the Linux bridge utilities could probably do better.

Here is the showlog.cgi script I placed in the /var/www/cgi-bin/arbi directory:

 #!/bin/perl
 print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
 print "<html><head></head><body><pre>";
 system("cat /tmp/arblog.bak");
 system("cat /tmp/arblog");
 print "</pre></body></html>";

Here are some lines from the showlog output, catching the arbitrator slowing someone down with .05 second delays (the DELAY portion):

 11/06/06 08:39:32 PENALTY  IP : 147.124.8.230 192.156.134.2 POOL: 0  WAVG:  133212 BUFF: 102  DELAY: 5
 11/06/06 08:39:32 INCREASE PENALTY  IP: 147.124.8.230  192.156.134.2 POOL: 0  BUFF: 102  DELAY: 10
 11/06/06 08:39:44 Traffic up: 575430 Traffic  down: 962330  POOL 0
 PENALTY  THRESHOLD pool 0 up 2688000 down 2688000
 11/06/06 08:39:47 PENALTY DECREASE: 147.124.8.230 192.156.134.2 to 5 POOL: 0
 11/06/06 08:39:51 PENALTY REMOVE: 147.124.8.230 192.156.134.2 POOL: 0

Here is some output from our connections script with the top 5 out and in hosts:

 Total Connections: 2074
 More than 3 Outgoing Connections:
 192.156.134.15 76
 192.156.134.2 61
 72.166.201.218 58
 192.156.134.16 36
 72.166.205.159 21
 More than 3  Incoming Connections:
 72.166.205.159 88
 192.156.134.15 76
 72.166.201.110 57
 192.156.134.2 56
 72.166.201.218 51

Notice the hosts with more than 20 connections. Some of these are exempt servers, but others are workstations. Our firewall disallows non related incoming connections campus workstations, Netequalizer is in front of the firewall. I have examined some of these cases and many are P2P connection attempts that never truly connect to transfer data or are very short lived. We typically see about 20 to 30 hosts at or above the connection limit and about 100 hosts with more than 3 incmoing or outgoing connections, including all of our Internet servers.

  • Verification, Tests

We have an out of band PC using Ntop to track what hosts on the network are doing. I have verified the output of the Netequalizer against our Ntop machine many times in the last few months. I have also on occasion initiated a large download from a fast Internet site when I notice one or two folks getting high data rates. At those times I have observed Netequalizer start to arbitrate, creating head room on the pipe to keep bursty interactive traffic responsive.

  • Criticism, Pros, Cons
 The user interface is spartan, strictly functional
 Ntop is not really usable on the appliance

 Editors note: ( NTOP has been updated and supported in later versions since this comment was posted)

 An SNMP daemon should be included
 More logging should be available
 Performance is as advertised, if not better
 Minimal configuration is required
 Maintenance is minimal
 User manual has some typos
 User manual requires a full read
 User manual is only 36 pages, reflects minimal configuration required
 Some level of customization is allowed without voiding the warranty
 Support is excellent
 The price is fair, the best value in the product space

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 Testimonials. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

Complimentary NetEqualizer Tech Training Seminar Is Coming to Monterey, CA

November 8, 2007 — netequalizer

On Wednesday, December 19 from 9:30 a.m. to noon, we will be hosting a complimentary seminar on
the NetEqualizer technology at the Portola Plaza Hotel (http://www.portolaplazahotel.com/) in Monterey, CA. The seminar will be divided into two parts, with the first providing an overview of the NetEqualizer and the second focusing on advanced technical training. Since the Portola Plaza runs the NetEqualizer in its conference center and hotel, we’ll be able to examine live hotel traffic as part of the training session.

This will be a great opportunity for existing and potential customers to see the full capabilities of the NetEqualizer. If you’re in the area, be sure to catch it!

For more details, contact us via e-mail at admin@apconnections.net or give us a call at 303-997-1300, extension 102. We look forward to hearing from you & meeting you at the seminar!

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