Editors Choice: The Best of Speeding up Your Internet


Edited by Art Reisman

CTO – www.netequalizer.com

Over the years we have written a variety of articles related to Internet Access Speed and all of the factors that can affect your service. Below, I have consolidated some of my favorites along with a quick convenient synopsis.

How to determine the true speed of video over your Internet connection: If you have ever wondered why you can sometimes watch a full-length movie without an issue while at other times you can’t get the shortest of YouTube videos to play without interruption, this article will shed some light on what is going on behind the scenes.

FCC is the latest dupe when it comes to Internet speeds: After the Wall Street Journal published an article on Internet provider speed claims, I decided to peel back the onion a bit. This article exposes anomalies between my speed tests and what I experienced when accessing real data.

How to speed up your Internet connection with a bandwidth controller: This is more of a technical article for Internet Service Providers. It details techniques used to eliminate congestion on their links and thus increase the perception of higher speeds to their end users.

You may be the victim of Internet congestion: An article aimed at consumer and business users to explain some of the variance in your network speeds when congestion rears its ugly head.

Just how fast is your 4g network?: When I wrote this article, I was a bit frustrated with all the amazing claims of speed coming with wireless 4G devices. There are some fundamental gating factors that will forever insure that your wired connection will likely always be a magnitude faster than any wireless data device.

How does your ISP enforce your Internet speed?: Goes into some of the techniques used on upstream routers to control the speed of Internet and data connections.

Burstable Internet connections, are they of any value?: Sheds light on the ambiguity of the term “burstable.”

Speeding up your Internet connection with an optimizing appliance: Breaks down the tradeoffs of various techniques.

Why caching alone will speed up your Internet: One of my favorite articles. Caching, although a good idea, often creates great unattainable expectations. Find out why.

QoS is a matter of sacrifice: Explains how quality of service is a “zero sum” game, and why somebody must lose when favoring one type of traffic.

Using QoS to speed up traffic: More on the pros and cons of using a QoS device.

Nine tips and tricks to speed up your Internet connection: A great collection of 15 tips, this article seems to be timeless and continually grows in popularity.

Network bottlenecks when your router drops packets: A simple, yet technical, explanation of how hitting your line speed limit on your router causes a domino effect.

Why is the Internet access in my hotel so slow: Okay I admit i , this was an attempt to draw some attention to our NetEqualizer which solves this problem about 99 percent of the time for the hotel industry. You can bring the horse to water but you cannot make them drink.

Speed test tools from M-labs: The most reliable speed test tool there is, uses techniques that cannot easily be fooled by special treatment from your provider.

Are hotels jamming 3g access?: They may not be jamming 3g but they are certainly in no hurry to make it better.

Five more tips in testing your Internet speed: More tips to test Internet speed.

NetEqualizer Passes Load Testing with High Marks


Editor’s Note: We just wanted to comment on this recent press release. This is not just industry hype as we really do test our units. To give you an example, several years ago we had a few units locking up in the field (perhaps one out of hundred) after many hours of continuous use. This type of problem is hard to re-create in a lab, but, unless you can recreate it, there’s very little chance of finding and correcting the issue. However, with the help of Candela Technologies and their LanForge equipment, we were able to recreate the problem quite easily. It was just a matter of accelerating time by increasing loads on the NetEqualizer well beyond what was likely in the real world.

Since that first experience with a load-related latent bug, we have always gone back to Candela for validation testing under load and are happy to say we have caught all service-related bugs with new versions prior to release.

With that said, here is the latest press release:


One-Gigabit NetEqualizer Performs Flawlessly Under Independent Load Testing

USA, FERNDALE, Washington (December 03, 2008) – APconnections – a leading supplier of plug-and-play bandwidth shaping products – today announced test results from the independent laboratory of Candela Technologies.

“APconnections has been coming to us for years to put extreme realistic loads on their equipment,” said Ben Greear, lead engineer, Candela Technologies. “We used our LANforge traffic generator to hit the latest NetEqualizer release with over 1.2 million simulated user data streams within a 60 second window. The NetEqualizer shrugged off
the abuse and continued to pass in excess of 800Mbps of bi-directional traffic.  The NetEqualizer successfully ran this torture test for a full 24 hours without a hiccup.”

Eli Riles, vice president of technology at APconnections, was very pleased with the results, noting the importance of the tests to ensuring NetEqualizer’s high level of performance.

“With our higher-end shaping solutions, we cannot afford a problem in the field,” said Riles.

APconnections is extremely grateful to have such a knowledgeable company like Candela Technologies with such impressive simulation capabilities testing its equipment. Their load generator is able to strain equipment well beyond real world situations, ensuring its stability and protecting company and product reputations.

The NetEqualizer is a plug-and-play bandwidth control and WAN/Internet optimization appliance. It is both flexible and scalable. The NetEqualizer’s unique “behavior shaping” technology gives priority to latency-sensitive applications such as VoIP and email. It does it all automatically and so dynamically while improving on other bandwidth shaping technology available.

For more information regarding the New NetEqualizer one-gigabit  carrier class traffic shaping solution, please visit www.netequalizer.com.

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

Candela Technologies specializes in emulating network traffic including VoIP and VLANs.

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