Tag Archive for bandwidth

| September 4, 2014
Comments Off on Will iOS 8 Crush Your Network?

Will iOS 8 Crush Your Network?

– Updated 09-09-14 – At their presser today, Apple announced that iOS 8 will be publicly available on Wednesday, September 17. The update is free and compatible with 10 current products:

iPhone 5S
iPhone 5C
iPhone 5
iPhone 4S
iPad Air
iPad with Retina Display
iPad 2
iPad mini with Retina Display
iPad mini
iPod touch 5th Generation

How are you going to protect your network?

—

Will iOS 8 Crush Your Network?TechRadar speculates that Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 8 will be released on September 10 and MacWorld UK reports that iOS 8 will run on most iPads, iPhones, or iPod Touch devices when it arrives. This means that if you haven’t already done something about it any iDevice that walks into your Wi-Fi will want to download 100+ megabytes of data. And you know what means user complaints that the internet is broken and the network is slow.

iOS 8 will cruch your networkThe folks at Exinda, a supplier of policy-based WAN Orchestration recently put out some suggestions on how to keep your network functional during Apple’s (AAPL) iOS 8 update madness, unlike the iOS 7 release last year. Few organizations were prepared for the effects that widespread software updates would have across corporate and educational networks.

Shortly after the software launch, download requests bombarded networks which prevented users from accessing key applications or completing work on time. Boston-based Exinda says reports from last year showed that the iOS 7 update used more than 60% of bandwidth and caused several networks to crash completely.

Exinda logoExinda polled their community of networking experts to weigh in with three possible strategies to help you survive release week, no matter how complex your IT environment is.

Set an iOS policy

Set a policy to completely block software upgrades 20% of Exinda customers said that controlling iOS 7 upgrades was their biggest IT headache last year. If iOS 7 put a huge strain on your network last year, proactively blocking this year’s software release may be the best way to protect your network.

complaints that the internet is brokenBefore release week, simply create a policy using the Apple Software Updates application signature and set it to discard the traffic. This will cause all network traffic generated from iOS 8 to be discarded, effectively keeping your users from upgrading their devices on your network.

Limit the bandwidth software upgrades use

Depending on your network and users, you may have no choice but to let some of your users upgrade their devices during peak hours, particularly if you’re a school with a 1:1 iPad program. To control the amount of bandwidth iOS 8 can use on your network, set a policy that guarantees minimum and maximum levels of bandwidth that can be consumed during this upgrade. We recommend setting the minimum at 1 Kbps and giving this policy a low priority so it does not take precedence over your more important traffic.

Three stratgiesBruce Miller, vice president of product marketing at Xirrus in a Fierce Mobile article, advised IT administrations to deploy Wi-Fi network application control software that regulates how the network handles bandwidth-hogging apps and spikes in traffic.

IT needs to be savvy at the application level, identify when something like this happens and then be able to apply QoS [quality of service] or prioritization to applications, not just to users.

Cache iOS software upgrades

Cache software upgrades at the network edge – Last year many Exinda customers cached the iOS download at the network edge, which allowed their users to upgrade their devices without using too much bandwidth or hurting network performance. To do this, create a new policy to cache the iOS 8 upgrade. This means that after the software has been downloaded on the network once, each subsequent download request will be served up locally, letting you preserve your bandwidth and prevent network outages.

rb-

The release of iOS 7 last year blindsided many IT managers. Large numbers of employees upgrading their devices at the same time caused many networks to crash, leaving users unable to access key apps or get work done on time.

I also blogged about how The NCAA Basketball and World Cup tournaments would be huge bandwidth wasters here. IT managers need to be more alert to events outside their network that can overwhelm the corporate network.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| June 17, 2014
Comments Off on Is Your Network Ready for World Cup

Is Your Network Ready for World Cup

Is Your Network Ready for World CupThe 2014 FIFA World Cup games are underway and run until July 13. Normally I would not bring this up here, since most Americans ignore soccer. However web access security firm, Wavecrest Computing, make of the Cyblock web filter, reports that there has been a 32% increase in Americans interest in soccer since the broadcast of the last World Cup in 2010.

Soccer ballIn addition to the uptick in interest, the American team won a match this time around, which will garner even more interest. This increased interest in soccer can have an impact on your Internet bandwidth. The author asks what happens to your Internet bandwidth if most of your employees start streaming the games or highlights simultaneously, can it sustain the demand and still do business?

42% of IT professionals state that popular events impact their network. How many simultaneous users watching game highlights does it take to saturate your bandwidth? The article calculates that just 2 streaming users result in a 1 Mbps download, while 17 users equal a huge 10 Mbps. Quickly overwhelming Internet bandwidth.

Saturated bandwidth

How many simultaneous users watching World Cup game highlights does it take to saturate your bandwidth?

Given the time difference with Brazil, most of the 64 matches will be played during U.S. office hours, and streaming video could deal a major blow to corporate network and application performance according to the blog. When the first match of the day kicks off, smartphones, tablets, and laptops will be streaming footage live from offices around the U.S.

FiltersIn addition to the major spike in bandwidth usage, Wavecrest whose products help organizations manage and control employee Web activity reminds us there are World Cup 2014 malware sites are out there. According to a recent survey from Osterman Research, malware has infiltrated 74% of organizations via the Web.

The firm’s products can also address the lost productivity and revenue as staff watches the matches and not working. Most of the matches will be played during U.S. office hours. The lost productivity caused by watching the World Cup can total 99 hours average wages lost per hour each day according to Wavecrest. The Wavecrest systems can monitor, report, filter, and throttle employees’ bandwidth use.

In order to keep pace with the staff, CyBlock products can be set up to block Web access by categories and by half-hour so employees can access sports sites on their lunch break or after hours.

rb-

I have been there done that. In 2012 Michigan, Michigan State, and the University of Detroit all played in the NCAA Basketball tournament and the entire 250 Mbps Internet pipe was down to a crawl for most of the afternoon.

There are other tools to use, we were using an M-86 content filter then. We used that to block much more than you would think to get control of the network. In addition to the M-86 default groups, we had to block all the ESPN sites, NCAA sites, and CBS.

We also had a PacketShaper at our disposal and were doing to throttle streaming video, but there were legitimate users of streaming video.

A lot of this comes down to policy and discipline.  Is watching NCAA hoops or soccer a business need? Is there leadership to enforce the AUP and tell people to stop wasting resources?

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
| March 27, 2012
2 comments

186Gbps Transfer Sets Real-World Speed Record

186Gbps Transfer Sets a Real-World Fiber Speed RecordResearchers have set a new world record for data transfer. The new record was set at the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle, Washington. PhysOrg.com reports the international team set the speed record when they transferred 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) of data across 134 miles of an optical network for 11 hours.

Commercially available circuits

SuperComputing 2011The record-setting connection used a commercially available 100 Gbps circuit. The circuit was set up by Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network (CANARIE) and BCNET, a non-profit, shared IT services organization. PhysOrg says the team was able to reach transfer rates of 98 Gbps between the University of Victoria Computing Center in Victoria, BC, and the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. With a simultaneous data rate of 88 Gbps in the opposite direction, the team reached a sustained two-way data rate of 186 Gbps between two data centers. This broke the team’s previous peak-rate record of 119 Gbps set in 2009.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech) led the team of high-energy physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers from the University of Victoria, the University of Michigan, the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), and other partners.

transport large quantities of data across global networks of optical fibersAccording to PhysOrg, the achievement will help set up new ways to transport increasingly large quantities of data. More and more data traverse continents and oceans via global networks of optical fibers. The next generation of network technology needs new methods to transfer rates of 40 and 100 Gbps—that will be built in the next couple of years.

“Our group and its partners are showing how massive amounts of data will be handled and transported in the future,” Harvey Newman, professor of physics and head of the high-energy physics (HEP) team told PhysOrg. “Having these tools in our hands allows us to engage in realizable visions others do not have.”

“The 100 Gbps demonstration at SC11 is pushing the limits of network technology by showing that it is possible to transfer petascale particle physics data in a matter of hours to anywhere around the world,” adds Randall Sobie, a research scientist at the Institute of Particle Physics in Canada and team member told PhysOrg.

The speed record equipment was not sexy

memorex guyExtremeTech points out that the achievement is quite significant. It is significant because the scientists used a commercially available 100 Gbps link and not “over private networks under laboratory/testbed conditions.” The equipment was not particularly sexy either. ExtremeTech lists Dell (DELL) servers with Intel (INTC) Sandy Bridge-based server motherboards with PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 solid-state drives. They used 10 and 40 Gbps LAN connections, and Force10 Z9000 and Brocade (BRCD) MLXe-4 switch-routers. The gear was able to achieve a disk to disk transfer rate of 60 Gbps, around 7.5 gigabytes per second. The 186 Gbps record was a memory-to-memory transfer between the servers. The max per-computer speed was 35 Gbps. Tested.com calculates that 4.42 petabytes traveled across the network during the transfer test.

rb-

So why does anyone need to move two million gigabytes per day? This is fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day.

CERN needs faster transfer rates. CERN needs to move the huge amounts of data coming from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC has already generated more than 100 petabytes of data. The data is processed, distributed, and analyzed at 300 computing and storage facilities at laboratories and universities around the world. Scientists believe the data volume will rise a thousand-fold as physicists crank up the collision rates and energies at the LHC in their attempt to cause the end of the world (Not)

FierceTelecom predicts that service providers will deploy 100Gig when the price of 100Gig is double the price of 40Gig. They believe that will take place in 2013.

This massive amount of bandwidth running on commodity Internet pipes with available hardware seems to spit in the eye of current bandwidth providers who can’t seem to provide a 10 Mbps circuit reliably.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| September 26, 2008
Comments Off on 25% of Workers’ Time On Internet Is Personal

25% of Workers’ Time On Internet Is Personal

25% of Workers' Time On Internet Is PersonalSlashdot has a post about employee use and abuse of corporate Internet access, from Voco, an IT consultancy. While network abuse is not a new issue, (I worked on Acceptable Use Policies in 2000), some of the firm’s findings show the change in the size of Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) violations.

According to Voco’s data, for example, many of the pre-release downloads of the movie Hellboy: The Golden Army were over corporate networks. Voco points out that not only does this consume bandwidth meant for business; it also opens up corporate networks to spyware, adware, and other challenges for network security. And, of course, it could pose a legal issue for the company in question as well. “If investigators were tracking who was downloading, then the company address would turn up and the company would be the one facing legal implications,” Voco consultant Paul Hortop said in a statement.

The age-old challenge for firms is to balance staff “personal” and “corporate” use of the resources. Mr. Hortop asks, “Is it more time-efficient to let staff do their banking online than having them leave the office for half an hour?”

This is not a new issue, a CNN poll in 2005 found that 93% of all US employees admitted to using their employer’s Internet access for personal reasons as well as business ones, and 52% said they would rather give up coffee than their Internet connections at work.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , ,