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Topic: What to do about bandwidth hogs? (Read 1884 times) |
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Walter Watts
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What to do about bandwidth hogs?
« on: 2009-09-24 19:21:16 » |
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[Walter]
I see an excellent opportunity for some competition in the devices described in this article.
The company discussed in this article ended up spending $250,000 per device for their deep packet inspection needs.
AND, they were extremely pleased with the outcome of their purchase decision.
$250,000 for some cheap electronics and smart code.
That smells like $$$$$$ opportunity to moi.
PS--and no, I'm not interested in any ventures. I like my peaceful retirement. 
I just like to point out possibly helpful stuff to my church brethren.
--Walter
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This story appeared on Network World at
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/092409-intown-suites-bandwidth-management.html
What to do about bandwidth hogs?
InTown Suites blocks file sharing apps with Exinda appliances
By Carolyn Duffy Marsan , Network World , 09/24/2009
InTown Suites, a low-cost extended-stay living chain, had a problem with users of file sharing applications who were consuming all of its network bandwidth.
Based in Atlanta, InTown Suites has 139 properties around the country that use T-1 lines to link to a Cisco-powered virtual private network. InTown Suites provides its guests with free high-speed Internet access, but the bandwidth was being gobbled up by users of file sharing applications.
"We were having issues with guests file sharing using applications like BitTorrent and LimeWire," explained Stephen Bell, Director of IT for InTown Suites. "We would have one guest who would be file sharing, and that file sharing application would make so many connections that it would saturate the bandwidth on our T-1 and affect every other guest at that property."
Worse, InTown Suites employees couldn’t access key Web-based applications such as time and attendance and procurement because their T-1 lines were clogged.
InTown Suites tried blocking the IP and MAC addresses for the guests who were engaged in file sharing, but that didn’t work for long.
"Most of these guests were savvy enough that they’d assign themselves another IP address or MAC address from [Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol], so we just went back and forth with the fight," Bell said.
InTown Suites didn’t want to spend money on additional bandwidth because they believed it would just be consumed by the guests who were running file sharing applications. Instead, the company looked for a network appliance that would identify and block the file sharing traffic that was causing trouble.
"These file sharing applications are hard to identify because this particular traffic disguises itself as something else," Bell said. "We needed something that would look at the traffic and identify the traffic for what it really was."
Bell evaluated two devices that could do deep packet inspection: Packeteer (now owned by Blue Coat) and Exinda. Bell said the Exinda device was a better fit for his needs.
"The Packeteer did what it was supposed to do," Bell said. "It allowed us to isolate the office side from the guest side, prioritize the office side and manage the guest side bandwidth so it was more equitable. What it didn’t do was specifically identify packets and block the traffic that we wanted to block. Exinda was a much better solution for our specific problem."
InTown Suites spent around $250,000 to purchase an Exinda device for each of its locations. The company uses these devices to prioritize office traffic and to block peer-to-peer traffic.
Bell said the Exinda devices were simple enough to configure and install that the company could use onsite staff rather than flying IT personnel out to each location for installation.
Bandwidth management boost
Thanks to the improved bandwidth management from the Exinda devices, InTown Suites is putting all of its voice and data traffic on integrated T-1 lines at each of its properties, which are being provided by Qwest.
"The folks in the locations are thrilled about not having to fight this constant fight that the Internet is down and multiple guests are complaining and it’s all because one guest is doing something nefarious," Bell said. "On the guest side, we get a few complaints but it’s typically people who are trying to file share."
Since the Exinda devices were installed this year, the number of guest complaints about slow Internet service has dropped 95%, Bell estimates.
"Guest-side Internet issues were our number one helpdesk request at the corporate office, and that is no longer true," Bell said. "Our number one return on this investment is guest satisfaction. Then add to that…us not having to buy additional bandwidth."
The demand for deep packet inspection is growing for all kinds of enterprises, not just hospitality companies like InTown Suites, says Phil Hochmuth, a senior analyst with Yankee Group.
"To really get at what is going on with a lot of these new file sharing or Web 2.0 applications, you have to crack open the packets to see what’s in the stream and that requires a deeper level of intelligence," Hochmuth says. "It gets a little bit of a bad rap…but a lot of enterprises are looking at this."
Hochmuth says the cost of application-layer inspection devices is coming down, thanks to faster, cheaper processors.
"These technologies can be deployed more broadly, not just at your data center or just at your most critical link," Hochmuth adds. "People want deeper information about what kind of traffic is running over their networks, and they want it in more places."
All contents copyright 1995-2009 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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Hermit
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Re:What to do about bandwidth hogs?
« Reply #1 on: 2009-09-24 20:38:18 » |
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What is a "bandwidth hog"? Somebody using a connection more than expected by the supplier? Why was it not expected? Any time connectivity has been offered, demand has exceeded what was provided. Thus the problem is indubitably not with the users, but with the suppliers who have not performed appropriate capacity planning and have failed to establish a scalable provisioning system.
On the one hand, spending money on expensive devices that add latency to the network is a total misapplication of investment. Blocking traffic, usually to force people to accept expensive offerings from the vendor, is unconscionable. The Internet treats all packets in a priority class equally and blocks nothing. Therefore a supplier (e.g. Cox) which charges for Internet connectivity but blocks ports or applications, adds latency or imposes packet loss is not providing Internet access and is engaging in fraudulent behaviour. If a supplier charges for 100 Mbit access and effectively delivers non-blocking kilobit level traffic, the supplier is defrauding the people paying them. Where a supplier claims "unusual" traffic patterns are impacting their ability to deliver what they have sold, but the traffic patterns are not actually unusual at all, then the supplier is engaging in unfair and deceitful behaviour. All of these things are common in the USA (and to an extent in some other countries) today.
On the other, consider that the same fibre that a decade ago carried OC-3 traffic for a certain cost can now carry eight channels of OC-192 traffic at the same cost or a 512 times improvement. Has your bill decreased or performance increased by even a fraction of that? In the same period our LANs have gone from 10Mbit to 10 Gbit throughput or a 1000 times improvement. Why are WANs not keeping up? The reason is insufficient pressure on suppliers.
In the rest of the world "socialism" is ensuring that technological advantages are shared. In the US, protected capitalists share nothing unless forced to. Which is what net neutrality regulations are all about. And the fact that your bandwidth has not improved and cost is stagnant points to why network neutrality regulations are desperately needed.
The correct answer to alleged "bandwidth hogs" is to add the required bandwidth and deal with suppliers to ensure that not only does the cost of bandwidth continue to decrease exponentially (as it has for suppliers), but also that at least some of this saving is passed on to the consumers, which at least in the US, it has not. An additional factor is that while we are probably coming to the end of America as a global leader and it is naturally going to get far worse as our economy implodes, still we have a small window in which we can upgrade before improvements become much harder to justify. Currently the US has the oldest and slowest network of the G20 - including China which is building out their network to deliver non-blocking Gigabit to the door, and Europe which has a mix of 10 to 1000 Mbits to the door. Permitting suppliers to "save" bandwidth by blocking applications will merely entrench this massive competitive disadvantage that we and our descendants - if we have any - will need to live with.
Love Etc
PS at $5/m installed, $US 250,000 would buy 50km of 24 core OC-192 fibre. And definitely a multi gigabit connection to their nearest telecom hub. And at $20,000 per connection for Reticulus (community oriented darkgreen energy, water, waste, data, refer http://www.reticulus.com) would fund a fair amount of Reticulus for a community.
Which is why this is simply insane.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Walter Watts
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Re:What to do about bandwidth hogs?
« Reply #2 on: 2009-09-24 22:21:49 » |
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Quote from: Hermit on 2009-09-24 20:38:18
What is a "bandwidth hog"? Somebody using a connection more than expected by the supplier? Why was it not expected? Any time connectivity has been offered, demand has exceeded what was provided. Thus the problem is indubitably not with the users, but with the suppliers who have not performed appropriate capacity planning and have failed to establish a scalable provisioning system.
<snip>
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Last time I checked, I was living in a free, capitalist domain.
Accordingly, InTown Suites, a low-cost extended-stay living chain, which had a problem with users of file sharing applications consuming all of its network bandwidth, had a right to deploy its privately held assets in any manner they saw fit.
I just made the pragmatic observation that someone should easily be able to undercut the costs of the deep packet inspection devices they chose.
If it was I who was deploying resources in such a scenario, where 98% of the network is suffering because some jackass is torrenting pirated movies, I would do just as they did, only with cheaper equipment.
I wouldn't turn the motel into an Internet Exchange Point.
;)
Walter
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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Hermit
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Re:What to do about bandwidth hogs?
« Reply #3 on: 2009-09-25 00:40:18 » |
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The trouble is that with the whole 150 kbytes/second available from a T1, or about 1% of the bandwidth of a single 100Mbit Ethernet, the miserable throughput is not going to go very far no matter how it is sliced and diced. Then again, a single ten year old Linux computer powered by an asthmatic hamster and acting as a traffic shaping router would support all the traffic that could fit through that pipe even if you chose to juggle with every byte going in or out. And it could do it for under $100 or about .04% of the quarter of a million these idiots allegedly chose to spend...
Thanks for the heads up on one place it is worth avoiding if the Internet is important in your life.
Love etc.
PS Port blocking would be fine as long as the supplier does not claim to offer "Internet access." Also, buyer beware or not, most home DSL systems now offer better throughput than they are sharing amongst all the users in their hotels, and a note to that effect would be a good idea lest somebody imagine that they could attempt to use VOIP, watch a media stream, attempt to play an on-line game or engage in any other activity that would be made futile by the packet dropping and latency their gateway will cause.
PPS Lip-service notwithstanding, the US is far from free and even further from capitalism. The best term I have come up with to describe the US to date is a kleptocracy where the vampires feasting on the body politic run the system while doling out the little blue pills to which the population is addicted.
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." [Morpheus, The Matrix]
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Walter Watts
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Re:What to do about bandwidth hogs?
« Reply #4 on: 2009-09-25 13:01:15 » |
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Oh, Hermie.
You're just a big ol' poopy-head!
Wally
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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