NetEqualizer News: May 2017

May 11, 2017 — netequalizer

We hope you enjoy this month’s NetEqualizer Newsletter. Highlights include an update on the 8.5 Release, a reminder about our NetEqualizer Leasing program, a customer story about how RTR helped them identify a virus in their network, a refreshed NetEqualizer white paper, and more!

 

May 2017

 
8.5 Release – Development is Complete!
Greetings! Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News.

Our 8.5 Release development has completed, five happy stars to the development team! This month we talk about Enhanced DNS resolution reporting, and preview the Read-Only Administrative Access screens. If you would like to get your hands on the 8.5 release as a beta tester, please contact us to participate. Look for the 8.5 Release to be generally available early summer 2017.  

We continue to work with you to solve some of your most pressing network problems – so if you have one that you would like to discuss with us, please call or email me anytime at 303.997.1300 x103 or art@apconnections.net.

And remember we are now on Twitter. You can follow us @NetEqualizer.

– Art Reisman (CTO)

In this Issue:

:: First Impressions on our 8.5 Release

:: NetEqualizer Leasing always great option!

:: RTR Traffic History Reports Capture Unknown Virus Activity for WNPL

:: Updated Executive White Paper

:: Best of Blog: How to Create and Send an Encrypted File With No NSA Backdoor

First Impressions on our 8.5 Release

8.5 Release Development is Complete!

I finally got a chance to kick the tires on our 8.5 release, and it kicked me back! I really like so much in 8.5, it is difficult to determine where to start!

The biggest wow factor to hit me was our enhanced DNS reporting. For years our customers have been asking, “Can you tell me how much traffic went to YouTube or Netflix?” Well, I am thrilled to say that finally the answer is yes.

With our DNS reporting you can now track all the data to any well-known public domain. The screen shot below of our Active Connections Report says it all. You can see the domains in the DST (destination) and SRC (source) columns for all live traffic flowing through the network.

In addition to being able to see public domains for all active traffic, you can now also view Traffic History for any host names that you have set up to track. You can see history for a selected public domain in the screenshot below.

I also love our expanded login capabilities. Many of our customers have a support Help Desk team on site. These are the first responders for network problems in your organization. Just like their counterparts in the medical field (EMTs), they may not be trained in advanced surgical techniques. For example, you would not want them making policy changes on your bandwidth controller, but you definitely need your help desk personnel to do some initial triage, gather some data, and keep the patient alive, until the doctor arrives on scene.

Our NEW Read Only login will give them access to RTR and all its advanced reporting screens, without the possibility of any life-threatening policy changes to the network.

You can see that this person is logged in as Read Only by looking in the top right portion of the menu bar for the RTR icon, or looking for the “report” login next to the new Logout feature.

And finally, we continue to expand our Preferences capabilities, so that you can customize your experience with the NetEqualizer.

“Remember one hundred and twenty eight thousand bytes per second is a Megabit.” I was getting tired of uttering this phrase and being an apologist for our units displayed on our connection tracking (Active Connections) screen. In fairness to our engineering team, the connection tracking table started out as a simple troubleshooting tool for internal use, and has now morphed into one of the more important real-time reporting screens for our customers.

With 8.5 we bring you units in Megabits (or whatever unit your preference may be)! See the screenshot below. Once you select your preference, these units will be on your Active Connections Report.

With our 8.5 release entering the system test phase, we will soon be looking for Beta Testers (June/July timeframe). If you are interested in participating, please contact us.
NetEqualizer leasing always a great option!

Check out our leasing program!

Do you have a short term need for a bandwidth shaper? Perhaps a conference event, or something to tide you over while waiting for a bandwidth upgrade? Maybe your business model requires you to spread out expenses over time instead of an up front purchase? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, now is the time to contact us about leasing a NetEqualizer. We offer leases starting at 2 months with no long term contract.
RTR Traffic History Reports Capture Unknown Virus Activity for WNPL

RTR has more uses than you might think…

The following is an email we received from Kevin Getty – Head of Information Technology for Warren-Newport Public Library. Kevin found an interesting use for our RTR interface and associated data.

Thanks Kevin!
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Having some spare time one day I decided to see what I could do with the data that’s provided by the four week traffic history report. First I downloaded the data and imported it into a spreadsheet to see what was available and formatted it into a more user friendly display. Once formatted I grouped the data by IP address and started to analyze the upload throughputs by user per day. I quickly realized what “normal” activity was looking like for our network PC’s.

Once the IP’s were resolved to DNS names, I was surprised to see such high bandwidth from a specific PC. Bandwidth that was large and during closed office hours spreading across multiple days. I approached the user to see if they had any experience with slow or intermittent internet access and sure enough they did. Their experience of slowness was the NetEQ doing it’s wonderful job of penalizing them and normally it should, but the user experienced slowness due to a bug on the computer. They also stated they left their PC on overnight because they didn’t want to lose what they had been working on, so this explained why the traffic showed during closed hours. When asked if they knew when they started to experience slowness, their answer matched what the data showed in the four week report.

The next step was to investigate to see if the PC had any bugs or malware that hadn’t been caught yet. Using several antivirus and malware removal utilities that are known to be successful at finding the little buggers, all came up empty. So the next thing was to restore the user’s Windows profile from backup prior to the high traffic use. After restoring the profile and monitoring for a day, the reports showed normal traffic.

Since then I’ve written a windows application that will download the reports and analyze the traffic. Granted, not all high usage is necessarily bad traffic, but the uploading was what caught my eye and is analyzed in the application to signal an alarm. The first screenshot shows the overall bandwidth usage of the report.

The second shows the selected PC that was showing high usage. You’ll notice the consistent upload and download across several days.

I do have suggestions for your reports. Selectable date ranges and resolved DNS names would be nice.

I’ve been using NetEQ for over a decade now and I’m not sure what I’d do without it. Thanks for a great product and keep up the great work!
Updated Executive White Paper

Take a look at our refreshed white paper…

Our Executive White Paper has been updated to highlight a key capability of the NetEqualizer – that we are able to shape both encrypted and unencrypted traffic.

This is an important advantage of behavior-based shaping. Application traffic shapers are only able to shape unencrypted traffic, as they need to classify it to work with it. We have also updated the Comparison Table on Page 2 to better highlight how the NetEqualizer compares to Other Traffic Shapers.

The Executive White Paper is a good summary for management to read to get a quick feel of the NetEqualizer’s core capabilities, and also to understand how it differs from traditional application shapers.

Read our updated Executive White Paper here…
Best Of Blog

How to Create and Send an Encrypted File with No NSA Backdoor

By Art Reisman

Note: Believe it or not in a previous life, before I settled on computer science, I was a math major. Not much stuck from those days but I did remember one lesson very well, and that was that there are a plethora of ways to implement a mathematic encryption of data. In the following blog article I share with you an easy to use a program for personal encryption.

Below is a little routine I wrote to encrypt and decrypt a file.

This script is meant for encrypting text files and sending them privately through e-mail as an attachment.

Note: The author makes no claims about whether this encryption technique can be broken. It would not be easy.

Here is what you need to use this program.
1. Mac or other computer that can run a perl script from the command line
2. very basic knowledge of how to create and edit a file from the command line
Photo of the Month
Kansas Prairie Home from Days Gone By…

One of our staff members was visiting western Kansas recently, and decided to take a bike tour.  This house is one of many that remain from the Dust Bowl days, when many farmers abandoned their homes due to the prolonged severe drought. These homes dot the land, much of which was given away by the Homestead Acts.
APconnections, home of the NetEqualizer | (303) 997-1300 | Email | Website 
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NetEqualizer News: March 2016

April 11, 2016 — netequalizer

We hope you enjoy this month’s NetEqualizer Newsletter. Highlights include features from Release 8.4, our 2016 Leasing Program, and a presentation highlighting the NetEqualizer at the 2016 ASCUE Conference.

March 2016
Release 8.4 is almost here!
Greetings! Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News.

I write this today in the midst of a spring blizzard in Colorado. So far it appears that I have at least 15 inches of snow and drifts up to three feet outside my house, while it continues to blow more snow in at 35 miles an hour. Just another typical March day in Colorado! I was hoping to talk about spring in this newsletter, but now it seems far away.0fad184f-5ea1-44c3-ad71-1093fd99f808

This month we are talking about our upcoming release, slated for May, which features a lot of cool Usability Enhancements. Read below to learn more. We also continue our discussion on how the NetEqualizer is Cloud-Ready, as all things Cloud continues to be top-of-mind for all of us.

We are excited to announce that we will be represented at the ASCUE Conference in June. Join Young Harris College at their talk featuring the NetEqualizer.

And finally, we share more news about our 2016 Leasing Program, and how we are keeping bandwidth shaping affordable.
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And remember we are now on Twitter! You can now follow us @NetEqualizer.

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

– Art Reisman (CTO)
In this issue:

:: NetEqualizer Release 8.4 – Enhanced Usability – Is Almost Ready!
:: Keeping Bandwidth Shaping Affordable
:: Join a Presentation on NetEqualizer at ASCUE in June 2016
:: Six Ways to Save with Cloud Computing
NetEqualizer Release 8.4 – Enhanced Usability – Is Almost Ready!
A Complete GUI Redesign!

We recently had the chance to kick the tires on our new 8.4 Release interface. It really has some significant wow factor type features. In hindsight, perhaps we should have called this NetEqualizer 9.0 and not just lowly 8.4. We have been talking about this release as a GUI Redesign & Pool Enhancements, but I really think 8.4 is a release full of Usability Enhancements, that will make it easier to manage and configure your NetEqualizer.The biggest changes center on the the regular NetEqualizer GUI. We have transitioned everything to share the same look and feel as RTR. Here are some of the pages and features we are most excited about!1) Edit traffic limits on the fly without having to add/remove them one at a time! The screenshot below shows the Pool/VLAN shared limit interface. You can see the Pools, their names, and their associated members.mpxGG3D2) We added a cool new dashboard that serves as the homepage for NetEqualizer management (license key information blocked out in grey):dash3) The new GUI also has an easy way to set the time and pick a timezone – no more logging in to the NetEqualizer terminal!date4) You can now choose your units for the entire interface! This includes units for the configuration and RTR.unitesCheck back next month for an update on more exciting changes planned for 8.4!Our time frame for General Acceptance of this release is May of 2016.As with all software releases, the 8.4 Release will be free to all customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support (NSS).
contact_us_box-1
Keeping Bandwidth Shaping Affordable
NetEqualizer Leasing Program

At APconnections, we are proud of our reputation for offering affordable bandwidth shaping solutions. In the summer of 2013, we decided that we could help our customers that need to better align costs with recurring revenue, by offering a Leasing Program.lease

We are happy to announce that we have enhanced our lease offerings in 2016. Our “Standard” lease now comes with a 1Gbps license, and leases for $500 per month. Adding 1Gbps fiber at any of our lease levels just bumps up the price by $100 per month. And for those needing maximum performance, we now also give you access to an Enterprise-class NE4000 with our 5Gbps license and 10Gbps fiber.

If leasing is of interest to you, and you would like to learn more, you can view our Leasing Program agreement here.

Please note that the NetEqualizer Leasing Program is generally available to customers in the United States and Canada. If you are outside of these countries, contact us to see if leasing is available in your area.

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Join a Presentation on NetEqualizer at ASCUE in June 2016
Association Supporting Computer Users in Education

We are excited to announce that one of our long-time customers, Hollis Townsend, Director of Technology Support and Operations at Young Harris College, will be talking about his experience with the NetEqualizer in his talk at ASCUE, June 12-16, 2016 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.yhc

Young Harris has been using NetEqualizer to solve their network congestion issues since July, 2007. They have upgraded their NetEQ as their network has grown over the years, and currently run an NE3000 with a 1Gbps license.

We are also happy to announce that APconnections, home of the NetEqualizer, will be a Silver Sponsor at the ASCUE Conference. We will be giving away a great door prize – a Fitbit fitness watch!ascue

If you use technology in higher education, you may want to consider attending ASCUE this June. And if you have ever wanted to talk to a colleague about their experience with the NetEqualizer, please join Hollis’ presentation. His presentation is tentatively titled “Shaping Bandwidth – Learning to Love Netflix on Campus”.

ASCUE is the Association Supporting Computer Users in Education and they have been around since 1968. Members hail from all over North America. ASCUE’s mission is to provide opportunities for resource-sharing, networking, and collaboration within an environment that fosters creativity and innovation in the use of technology within higher education.

Click here to learn more about ASCUE or register for the June conference.

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Six Ways to Save with Cloud Computing
NetEqualizer Looks to the Clouds

We are continuing our focus on the cloud for NetEqualizer. The NetEqualizer is now cloud ready – as we’ve written about in previous newsletters. There are a lot of benefits to using the cloud in general. Here are just a few:

1) Fully utilized hardware
2) Lower power costs
3) Lower people costs
4) Zero capital costs
5) Resilience without redundancy
6) Lower network costs

The last one, lower network costs, is interesting. Since your business services are in the cloud, you can ditch all of those expensive MPLS links that you use to privately tie your offices to your back-end systems, and replace them with lower-cost commercial Internet links. You do not really need more bandwidth, just better bandwidth performance. The commodity Internet links are likely good enough, but when you move to the Cloud, you will need a smart bandwidth shaper.

Your link to the Internet becomes even more critical when you go the Cloud. But that does not mean bigger and more expensive pipes. Cloud applications are very lean and you do not need a big pipe to support them. You just need to make sure recreational traffic does not cut into your business application traffic.

The NetEqualizer fits perfectly as the bandwidth shaping product in the above infrastructure. Let us know if you have any questions about the cloud-ready NetEqualizer!

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Best Of Blog
How to Build Your Own Speed Test Tool

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Editor’s Note: We often get asked to “prove” the NetEqualizer is making a difference regarding end user experience. The tool description and method outlined in our blog post, can be used to objectively justify the NetEqualizer value. Let us know if you need any help setting it up.

Most speed test sites measure the download speed of a large file from a server to your computer. There are two potential problems with using this metric.

1) ISPs can design their networks so these tests show best case results.
2) Humans are much more sensitive to the load time of interactive sites.

A better test of your perceived speed is how long it takes to load up a new web page…
Photo Of The Month
IMG_1966
Balloon
Have you ever wondered what happens to balloons when they are released into the sky? The remnants of this balloon landed right in front of a staff member on a clear day while hiking Black Star Canyon in Orange County, CA. Balloons like this are actually an environmental disaster as they often end up in oceans and are eaten by sea and wildlife.
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NetEqualizer News: January 2015

January 13, 2015 — netequalizer

January 2015

Greetings!

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

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

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

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

The Joy of Leasing

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

This program works best for several types of customers:leasing

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

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

3) Customers who would like user-based pricing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Architecting the IPv6 Release (8.1v6)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Case Study: Lutheran Health Networkcasestudy

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

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

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

2015 NetEqualizer Pricing Preview

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

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

Key changes for 2015:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Of The Blog

How Does Your ISP Actually Enforce Your Internet Speed?

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

Have you ever wondered how your ISP manages to control the speed of your connection? If so, you might find the following article enlightening. Below, we’ll discuss the various trade-offs used to control and break out bandwidth rate limits and the associated side effects of using those techniques…
Photo Of The Month
bird
Roseate Spoonbill from Merritt Island National Seashore
The best thing NASA did besides going to the moon was preserving miles and miles of shoreline on the east coast of Florida near Cape Canaveral. The Merritt Island bird loop is better than the wild animal safari you can take over at Disneyland, alligators and exotic birds like you have never seen before.
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NetEqualizer News: April 2014

April 16, 2014 — netequalizer

April 2014

Greetings!

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

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

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

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

Our Summer Release (8.1) is Heating Up!

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

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

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

totaltraffic

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

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

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

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

Wanted: Summer 2014 Technical Seminar Location

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

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

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

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

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

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

sandy@apconnections.netWashington University in St Louis

-or-

303-997-1300 x104gordon_college

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

Think You Cannot Afford a NetEqualizer? Consider a Lease!

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

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

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

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

303-997-1300

NetEqualizer in a Nutshell: Summary Guides for Educationunnamed

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

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

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

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

support@apconnections.net

to get help optimizing your NetEqualizer.

Best Of The Blog

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Headwinds of Change

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

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

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

IMG_1022

Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo
Nestled in the hills behind Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo, is a sculpture garden to rival any modern art museum in the world. It actually appears to be more of a sculpture graveyard, filled with architecture student projects erected over the years that have been abandoned. Nevertheless, it’s a mysterious location worth visiting if you are ever in the area.
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NetEqualizer News: July 2013

July 16, 2013 — netequalizer

July 2013

Greetings!

Enjoy another issue of NetEqualizer News! This month, we discuss our new NetEqualizer Leasing Program and talk about improvements to both our GUI and our Dynamic Real-Time Reporting tool. As always, feel free to pass this along to others who might be interested in NetEqualizer News.
A message from Art…
Art Reisman, CTO – APconnections

I have been focused on technical projects lately, such as our 64-bit release, art_smallour new Dynamic Real-Time Reporting, and also some improvements in our NetEqualizer Caching Option (NCO). While taking a break from thinking about technology, I became involved in a leasing deal for a customer acquiring a NetEqualizer, and thought – we can do that better!

So… this month we are introducing the NetEqualizer Leasing Program, offered directly from APconnections on a trial basis. If you find this of value, we will keep this program around. Leasing gives you another way to manage your cash flow and capital expenditures, so that you can solve your network congestion issues with a NetEqualizer today.

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

Lease a NetEqualizer!

We are happy to announce a brand new way to get all the benefits a NetEqualizer can provide without having to front the initial cost: the NetEqualizer Leasing Program!

How it workslease

NetEqualizer offers three leasing programs which vary based on the number of users in your network. Each program has an associated monthly fee that includes licensing, software updates, and support. Here are the prices of the three programs:

Small (less than 300 users): $300/mo.
Medium (300 to 1000 users): $450/mo.
Large (more than 1000 users): $750/mo.

Lessees can cancel at anytime provided the unit is in good condition once it is sent back.

This is a great way to get a NetEqualizer into your network for a low monthly fee and very little money upfront.

For complete details, take a look at our Leasing Program Agreement here. There is also information located on our How to Buy page.

If you have any questions about our NetEqualizer Leasing Program, contact us today at:

sales@apconnections.net

Reminder: 10 Year Anniversary Celebration!APconnections 10 Year Celebration

As part of our 10 Year Celebration, we will be donating $25 to one of four charities of the buyer’s choice for each unit sold from now until August 31, 2013. Address your bandwidth issues while helping a great cause! Contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

New GUI Features Coming This Fall!

Over the next few months, we’ll be adding some requested features to the NetEqualizer GUI to help improve user experience and increase functionality.

Here are some of the changes you are likely to see:
* Show all rules for an IP – be able to look up all associated rules for a given IP or subnet.
* Choose units for dashboard display – multiple options for bandwidth units beyond bytes/sec.
* See the top 10 offenders – this is already a feature in our Dynamic Real-Time Reporting tool, but it will soon be available to all.
* Priority by whois – Give priority to connections based on a whois lookup of their IP.
* And more!

We are continuing to invest in adding features to the new GUI, based on user requests and all the positive feedback we have received. We are excited to continue our commitment to providing you with the best tools to manage your network. Now that many of you have used the new GUI for 10+ months, let us know if there is something that you would like to see included this fall!

These features will be free to customers with valid NetEqualizer Software and Support. If you are not current with NSS, contact us today!

sales@apconnections.net

-or-

toll-free U.S. (888-287-2492),

worldwide (303) 997-1300 x. 103

Best Of The Blog

QoS Over the Internet: Is it Possible? Five Must-Know Facts

By Art Reisman – CTO – APconnections

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

After inquiring a bit deeper, I also found out this customer was using extensive VPNs to remote offices over DSL internet circuits. His WAN traffic from the remote offices was sharing links with regular Internet data traffic, and all of it was traversing the public Internet. Then it hit me – he did not realize his QoS mechanisms were useless outside of his internal network…
Photo Of The Month

pb4
Dog Days of Summer
One of our friends recently adopted a dog from an animal shelter, as she wanted a companion animal to play with her hyperactive terrier puppy. Here they are, already mimicking each other on Day 2 after the adoption. I am sure that they will both enjoy their new life together during these hot, dog days of summer!
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