Qwilt Goes to School: Saves 65% of Video Bandwidth and 96% of iOS Updates

Qwilt announced several deployments in college campuses that - ".. provides behind-the-scenes technology which fuels the new college lifestyle that now includes consuming copious amounts of online video such as educational streaming content, binge-able shows on Netflix and streaming Twitch tournaments. 

.. Jason Sebastiani, Principal Network Engineer at Grand Canyon University said: “.. After just one week of automatically learning what it could cache, we turned the Qwilt cache on and got immediate savings. Qwilt’s Open Cache solution currently serves close to 1GB per second of our streaming video peak traffic per day, which is about 65 percent of our total video bandwidth.”

Grand Canyon University (GCU) also benefitted from Qwilt’s solution when the bandwidth-heavy iOS 8.0 update came out. The Apple software update, which slowed traffic on networks nationwide, was considered a non-event for GCU because Qwilt cached it immediately and then delivered over 96 percent of the iOS updates from cache, allowing the average user to upgrade their Apple devices in minutes.

In addition to GCU, other schools that have deployed Qwilt’s Open Cache solution to date include: Lynn University, Western Kentucky University, University of Alaska and University of Hartford.


See "Qwilt Makes Online Video ‘Binge-able’ on College Campuses" - here.

iOS7 Update Traffic was 20% of Total; Crashed College Internet

Apple's iOS 7 update had its effect on the internet, causing increase in broadband traffic and disconnections to universities' campuses:  

• Dan Deeth brings to Sandvine's blog some stats on Apple's iOS7 update - "below is a report from a single North American fixed access operator, showing both the bandwidth and traffic share that Apple Updates accounted for over the past few days. Upon release at 1PM ET, Apple Updates immediately became almost 20% of total network traffic, and continued to stay above 15% of total traffic into the evening peak hours".
  
  See "Traffic Spotlight: iOS 7 Launch" - here.

• Peter Jacobs reports to Business Insider that "Several college campuses have reported that their wifi networks have crashed today and were likely affected by mass downloads of Apple's new iOS 7 operating system". 
  
  "Ohio University’s Internet access is problematic [see "Ohio University Tries to Block Netflix as 'Internet pipeline is overflowing'" - here] but the Office of Information Technology is working to remedy the situation .. In a university-wide email, students were asked to wait to download iOS 7, Apple’s new software upgrade, to potentially prevent further delays" (here)
  
  "It looks like iOS 7’s release managed to crash NYU wifi" (here).
  
  See "iOS 7 Downloads Have Likely Caused Multiple College Campuses To Lose Internet" - here.

[Survey]: How do US Universities Manage Bandwidth?

A recent survey by ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, shows that universities are still facing bandwidth management problems, same as 10 years ago when music downloads saturated their internet links, specially for those who were offering broadband services for students living on campus.

The second annual State of ResNet Report surveyed 251 universities or colleges, of which 24% were large institutes with more than 15,000 students.

The main conclusions:

• 61% of respondents expect the cost of providing ResNet to increase over the next two years. Half of those respondents expect an increase of 5% or more.
   
• Despite rising costs, 44% of schools reported no change in the portion of their operating budget devoted to ResNet over the last two years.
    
• 10% reported a decrease in ResNet funding over the same period, while 31% reported an increase.
   
• The top three factors attributed to increased spending are the cost of increasing bandwidth (72%), the cost of network hardware/software (63%) and the costs of providing new services to residents (50%).

Regarding bandwidth management:

• Despite considerable demand, most schools enforce minimal restrictions on bandwidth access in student residence halls.
   
• 68% of schools do not cap individual bandwidth usage for student residents.
   
• Of the institutions that cap usage, 16% provide students with the option to pay for additional bandwidth.

However, "A majority of colleges and universities manage bandwidth usage through various means, most commonly through shaping and limiting bandwidth by protocol"

Related post "Does the Education Market need Bandwidth Management?" - here.

See "2013 Second Annual ACUTA State of ResNet Report" - here.

Procera’s CEO Adds Color to Q2 Results

Below are several quotes made by James Brear (pictured), Procera's CEO, during their Q2 results call, which I find interesting (see "DPI Market Sees 21% Growth in H1 2012" - here):

• Revenues by verticals - "Our revenue in the second quarter was spread across all service provider segments, with 40% fixed line, 34% cable, 14% wireless and 12% higher education and enterprise .. We received 27 new higher education orders in the second quarter"

• Product - "During the quarter, we launched 2 exciting new product offerings that marked the entry into a $2.6 billion application delivery market (see "Procera Explains the New NAT and Steering Features" - here). Our carrier-grade NAP and advanced traffic steering products are designed to simplify large-scale subscriber deployments for network and cloud service providers"
   
• On Allot's recent acquisitions - "I would say that, as you can expect, we are knowledgeable about the market, and we knew and are aware of those acquisitions. We did not make any effort to participate. I think that's a decision that the competitor thought is strategic (see "Allot Integrates Ortiva and Oversi into the Service Gateway" - here), and I think time will tell".
   
• 3 Tier1 new customers - All 3 had competitive bids; 2 were replacements
   
• Guidance - " With our strong revenue performance year-to-date, we are raising our 2012 annual revenue guidance to a full year growth of 40% or approximately $62 million of revenue for the year, up from a previously provided guidance of 30% annual revenue growth"

See the transcript, by Seeking Alpha - "Procera Networks Management Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript" - here.

DPI Deployments [97]: U. of Exeter Deployed Allot "to throttle or block undesirable or illegal activity"

  

I mentioned few times the universities as a significant market for DPI products (here and here), as in many of them, the IT services are actually very similar to other public ISP services. Nevertheless, universities' IT also has some enterprise-like needs, such as protecting the university assets and preventing illegal activities.
 

Ron Condon reports to SearchSecurity (UK) the story of the University of Exeter ("16,500 full-time students, 40,000 active ports, traffic is doubling about every 18 months"): 

"Exeter had been trying to solve a content piracy problem that had been gradually growing over the years. Some students were visiting piracy sites and downloading material in breach of copyright laws, something the music and film industries are starting to police more effectively ..  So as part of a major network security upgrade this year installed the Allot Sigma-E traffic-shaping software .. product from Allot Communications"

According to Roger Snelling (picture), head of networks - "It allows us to provide bandwidth for legitimate purposes and to throttle or block undesirable or illegal activity .. The system went live just before the start of the new academic year, and it is already paying for itself .. It’s helping us to police the situation very rigorously ..  We have an eclectic mix of services, from researchers moving huge data sets, to the ability to support delay-sensitive traffic, such as VoIP, which we have included as part of our upgrade project"

See "University IT security pros thwart content piracy with traffic shaping" - here.



Source: Allot Communications



DPI Deployments (81): How US Universities Manage Video and P2P File Sharing?

 

I mentioned few times the market for DPI and traffic management solutions for universities, especially those with large campuses and  students living in the dorms (see "Does the Education Market need Bandwidth Management?" - here).  

Campus Technology (story by Vanessa Hua) provides some examples on how US universities are dealing with the reality in which ".. a quarter of campus bandwidth is devoted to external video, more even than general academics or online gaming. The percentage climbs to half at private colleges and small public schools, according to a recent survey of 221 four-year institutions conducted by Campus Televideo, a satellite provider of telecommunications .. More than a third of college students watch television online, and almost half are interested in watching video online exclusively .. 35 percent of students across the country downloaded music illegally and 16 percent downloaded movies illegally".

• Rather than put students in campus housing on a digital diet, network administrators at UCSB shifted a third of repetitive and high-bandwidth traffic to PeerApp's [here] local cache in May 2009. The move boosted network speeds and saved money by slowing the expansion of the pipe
   
• Streaming video accounts for half of residential traffic traveling through UCSB's internet link. To manage the load, the university also sets peak (1 p.m. to 1 a.m.) and nonpeak (1 a.m. to 1 p.m.) hours. If users exceed 1.5 GB of download during peak hours, the Procera packet-shaper automatically slows down their speed to 512k for 24 hours. Well aware of the consequences, students alter their usage accordingly. Traffic on the network spikes at 1 a.m., when students schedule downloads.
   
• To discourage peer-to-peer file sharing, WSU sets it as low priority on its network, slowing downloads and uploads of bandwidth-hogging, potentially copyrighted video and music
   
• Students at SUNY Brockport can simply pony up more cash: For an additional $50 each month, students can boost their basic data package of 5 Mbps to 15 Mbps
   

See "Residential Networks: Squeezing Cats Through the Pipe" - here.

Ohio University Tries to Block Netflix as "Internet pipeline is overflowing'"

        
An interesting experience in traffic management was carried by Ohio University and is summarized by Sean O'Malley, IT Communications Manager by:

"With finals week in full swing, the university’s Internet pipeline is overflowing with media downloads, with the lion’s share coming from services like Netflix.  As a result, many students and faculty have at times had difficulty accessing essential academic services like Blackboard". See background - "Does the Education Market need Bandwidth Management?" - here. 

"To improve access to academic online services, the university has increased the amount of bandwidth dedicated to its data center and instituted a 5 Mbps per user limit on residence hall download traffic. According to OIT network staff, this limit should be noticeable only to the small percentage of users who are consuming large quantities of Internet capacity. Many individuals actually will see a speed increase.  At 6:00 pm on Monday, March 14 and again at 11:00 pm, network technicians attempted to restrict just Netflix traffic; however, both those attempts resulted in Internet outages".

See "Flood Watch: OHIO's Internet connection overflows"  - here.

.

Tekelec Expects 6 New PCRF Wins in LAT

Patrick Nixon (picture) reports to Business News America that "Tekelec expects to deploy its policy and charging rules function (PCRF) for an additional six countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (CALA) by midyear" according to Federico Navarro, VP Sales CALA, at Tekelec.

See "Tekelec to deploy policy management solution in 6 countries" - here.

"Navarro, who attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, said 80% of his customer meetings were related to the PCRF solution and only 20% for Tekelec's traditional business of number portability solutions". While it is the fast growing part of Tekelec portfolio, PCRF revenues are still small part of the vendor's revenues (See "Tekelec: 2010 Orders for Policy and SDM were approx. $40M" - here).

Mr. Navarro also describes some of the use-cases for the region (but seen globally):

"Tekelec found that customers tend to want to have unlimited access to web browsing and email, but would be willing to pay a cost for bandwidth-hungry video .. For example, universities [see "Does the Education Market need Bandwidth Management?" - here] may want to restrict the level of web browsing students can do during the day and prioritize other academic related traffic  .. Or parents may want their children to have phones and unlimited access to instant messenger and social networks, but limited access to video .. Certain cable operators in Latin America have implemented a turbo feature that allows customers who are very keen on internet video to access it at faster download speeds at certain times, for example from 7pm-9pm. That access can be priced accordingly".
.

Does the Education Market need Bandwidth Management?

     

Source: Allot Communications

The education market was one of the first verticals to adopt bandwidth management. Many vendors is this space - Packeteer (now Bluecoat) and Allot Communications sold QoS/Bandwidth management solutions for universities and other education institutes in the US, Europe and AsiaPac to protect their internet links against "bandwidth hungry applications" (i.e. P2P file sharing applications). Just recently, Procera announced that "Higher Education Keeps Moving to Procera Networks" (here) claiming "new customer wins with 31 universities in the second quarter of 2010".

While we do see signs that P2P traffic takes smaller share of bandwidth (see "Cisco - It is All About Video, and Less About P2P"- here), traffic management problems did not disappear and ISPs, Carriers and mobile operators are deploying large scale traffic management solutions. As education networks are very similar in their subscribers' usage patterns to the public network, they probably need to take similar approach. See an example - "IPad - A Traffic Management Problem for Universities" - here.

For this reason I was surprised to see that the JANET, the UK Education and Research Network decided to withdrawn its "BMAS" - Bandwidth Management Advisory Service saying that:

"For a number of years the Bandwidth Management Advisory Service (BMAS) has provided free advice and  guidance to JANET user organisations, helping them to maximise the efficiency of their bandwidth resources including both the JANET connection and inter-site links. Over the last year or two, the need for and the usage of this service has been decreasing. As a result of this, the service was withdrawn on 1st August 2010". JANET published in the past a document "Good Practice Guide for Bandwidth Management" - here.

While it is possible that P2P may not be the reason to deploy bandwidth management solutions, there are many other reasons which should be considered, such as QoS/QoE needs of voice and video applications, P2P uploads etc. 

Anyway, I see that Allot and Procera will participate in the EDUCAUSE 2010 exhibit.

IPad - A Traffic Management Problem for Universities

  

It is 10 years now that universities are struggling with internet access traffic management problems. A concentration of P2P fileshares and savvy power-users, high speed links, access everywhere on campus (including wireless), students living on campus - all contribute to 100% utilization of all internet links, no matter how much bandwidth is added (chart at the right taken from Angelo State University)


In addition, as universities have also high capacity on their uplinks (as oppose to asymmetrical links at home) they are also the source for many file sharing downloads from all over the world. I believe most US universities (and other educational institutes) have already implemented DPI/traffic shaping devices - many of them between 2000-2003 (regardless of RIAA copyright issues associated with file sharing). See an article from 2002 - Bandwidth Management Tools, Strategies and Issues - here.


It seems that we have now a new source for traffic problems - Apple's IPad. A Washington Post article ("Capus Overload" - here) says - "Princeton University has blocked about two dozen iPads that were messing up the university network. Seton Hill University, which is equipping every student with an iPad, has had to quadruple its bandwidth and charge students a $500-per-semester technology fee. Cornell University is also seeing networking and connectivity issues, similar to what happened with the iPhone hit".

We were waiting for this since February see "The FCC Warns: Apple’s iPad may cause Network Congestion" - here




Most DPI vendors are targeting this market - see:

• Allot: Allot Solutions for Education Networks,
• Bluecoat: Accelerated learning for university environments
• Cisco: Application Performance in Higher Education 
• Procera: PacketLogic for Higher-Education Institutions