Here's a little background about what led us to release the NetEqualizer-Light....Over the years, we'd had several customers express interest in placing a NetEqualizer as close as possible to their towers in order to relieve congestion. However, in many cases, this would require both a weatherproof and low-power NetEqualizer unit - two features that were not available up to this point. However, in the midst of a growing demand for this type of technology, we spent the last few months working to meet this need and thus developed the NetEqualizer-Light.

Here's what you can expect from the NetEqualizer-Light:

• Power over Ethernet
• Up to 10 megabits of shaping
• Up to 200 users
• Comes complete with all standard NetEqualizer features

Early feedback on the new release has been positive. Here's what one user recently posted on DSLReports.com:

We've ordered 4 of these and deployed 2 so far. They work exactly like the 1U rackmount NE2000 that we have in our NOC, only the form factor is much smaller (about 6x6x1) and they use POE or a DC power supply. I amp clamped one of the units, and it draws about 7 watts....The Netequalizer has resulted in dramatically improved service to our customers. Most of the time, our customers are seeing their full bandwidth. The only time they don't see it now is when they're downloading big files. And, when they don't see full performance, its only for the brief period that the AP is approaching saturation. The available bandwidth is re-evaulated every 2 seconds, so the throttling periods are often brief. Bottom line to this is that we can deliver significantly more data through the same AP. The customers hitting web pages, checking e-mail, etc. virtually always see full bandwidth, and the hogs don't impact these customers. Even the hogs see better performance (although that wasn't one of my priorities). (DSLReports.com)

Pricing for the new model will be $1,200 for existing NetEqualizer users and $1,550 for non-customers purchasing their first unit. However, the price for subsequent units will be $1,200 for users and nonusers alike.

For more information about the new release, contact us at admin@apconnections.net or 1-800-918-2763.

The Seminar will cover:

• The various tradeoffs regarding how to stem p2p and bandwidth abuse
• Recommendations for curbing RIAA requests
• Demo of the new NetEqualizer network access control module
• Lots of customer Q&A and information sharing

This will be a great opportunity to learn more about the issues and challenges facing network administrators as well as see the NetEqualizer in action. If you're in the area, be sure not to miss it! For more information, contact us at admin@apconnections.net.

If you are current on your NetEqualizer Software Subscription (NSS), you can e-mail us for upgrade instructions.

Nine Tips and Tricks to Speed Up Your Internet Connection

Although there is no way to actually make your true Internet speed faster, here are some tips for home and corporate users that can make better use of the bandwidth you have, thus providing the illusion of a faster pipe.

1) Caching - How does it work and is it a good idea?

Offered by various vendors and built into Internet Explorer, caching can be very effective in many situations. Caching servers have built-in intelligence to store the most recently and most frequently requested information, thus preventing future requests from traversing a WAN/Internet link unnecessarily.

Many web servers keep a time stamp of their last update to data, and browsers such as the popular Internet Explorer will check the time stamp on the host server. If the page time stamp has not changed since the last time you accessed the page, IE will grab it and present a local stored copy of the Web page (from the last time you accessed the page), saving the time it would take to load the page from across the Internet.

So what is the downside of caching?