Lafayette, Colorado – November 15, 2004 – APconnections, a supplier of plug-and-play bandwidth shaping products, announced today that it has added support for priority voice and video traffic to its entire NetEqualizer product family. In addition, the company has added additional models to its product family. Now, businesses ranging from Internet cafes and corporations to service providers and telcos will be able to take advantage of NetEqualizer's built-in traffic shaping controls to cost-effectively and automatically provide priority for voice and video traffic and relieve congestion for data traffic with one easy-to-install and manage appliance.
“Unlike the alternatives, NetEqualizer installs in minutes and does not require the user to build and manage extensive policy libraries,” said Art Reisman, founder and CTO of APconnections. “The products seamlessly integrate with existing network infrastructure and do not require router upgrades or other network changes.”
NetEqualizer now ensures that latency sensitive voice traffic is given the highest priority, enabling the delivery of uninterrupted, high quality VoIP services. In addition, NetEqualizer prioritizes data traffic. Business-class applications, including Web browsing, chat and email get higher throughput than large downloads and p2p traffic.
“NetEqualizer has helped us to successfully rollout our new VoIP project, allowing us to increase our service offerings to our customer base,” said Jaimie Locke, administrator for Catapulsion Broadband. “We attempted to work with another vendor's products, but faced significant difficulties in both installation and management. We turned to APconnections for a solution. Once we plugged in NetEqualizer, our problems were solved. Installation was seamless and bandwidth allocation between voice and data traffic is automatic. And, best of all, our customers get crystal clear voice services.
Net Equalizer makes control decisions dynamically, prioritizing and shifting bandwidth between applications and connections as network usage rises and falls. During times of peak congestion, NetEqualizer apportions more bandwidth for latency sensitive applications, while still enabling data traffic such as large file downloads to traverse the network. This approach ensures user satisfaction and allows APconnections’ customers to reduce bandwidth expenses.
"We use NetEqualizer to balance the competing data traffic needs of our student population," said Andrew Bynum, IS manager, Housing Northwest, Inc., and instructor at Portland State University. "With heavy downloads, video files, chat and email, the traffic on our network presents a challenge when considering QoS. With the addition of priority for VoIP and video streaming, APconnections has given us a cost-effective solution that works out of the box for all of our traffic."
NetEqualizer reserves bandwidth for high priority applications by tracking connections on the network—any two endpoints talking to each other. When the network is congested, NetEqualizer “slows down” data connections, creating slower virtual circuits for data traffic. This pragmatic approach forces data connections to “give up” bandwidth that is then allocated to voice connections. NetEqualizer then applies fairness rules to the data traffic, allocating more bandwidth to Web browsing, chat and email and shifting bandwidth away from p2p applications and downloads.
NetEqualizer is compatible with all major IP PBX products.
In addition, APconnections is announcing additions to the NetEqualizer product family. The company now offers a range of configurations to meet the needs of businesses ranging a maximum of 2Mbps of equalizing up to 155 Mbps, per appliance. Customers with bandwidth requirements beyond 155 Mbps may add additional boxes.
Pricing and Availability
The NetEqualizer entry level product handles up to 2 Mbps of bandwidth and is listed at US$995. A typical configuration, with bandwidth equalizing up to 45 Mbps lists for US$2750. The entire product family is currently available.
About APconnections
AP Connections (www.apconnections.net) is a privately-held company founded in July 2003 and based in Lafayette, CO. The company develops fully-featured, cost-effective and easy-to-install and manage traffic shaping appliances based on Linux and Open Source technology. APconnections released its first commercial offering in July 2003, and since then over 1000 unique customers around the world have put the NetEqualizer family of bandwidth shaping products into service. NetEqualizer products can be found at ISPs, WISPs, major universities, Fortune 500 companies, SOHOs and small businesses on six continents.
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K2pr
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