Re: Packet shaping / bandwidth enforcement

[Cal Frye <cjf () CALFRYE COM>]

Vincent Stoffer wrote:
> We are in the process of looking at replacing our aging and bandwidth
> crunched Packetshaper.  I am curious what others are using, especially
> if you went from a Packetshaper to something else.  I'm aware of the
> NetEqualizer, the NetEnforcer and the Procera Packetlogic.  Any thoughts
> from users of these products and/or any other devices or solutions
> people have come up with?  I'm especially interested in how you handle
> redundancy/failure of such a device at your site.

When our Packetshaper 8500 was nearing end of support, I started demoing alternatives.
We have 2800 students, fully residential, and just under 1000 staff. Our connection is two
DS3 links, just commodity Internet. I feel we still need to do some application
management, we can't get sufficient performance with dynamic partitioning alone.

After a little playing around with the Procera unit, I stopped looking. It does the job
well, support has been very responsive, the price was comparable, and the box is speedy to
work with. The number of identified applications/traffic classes is now around 900. I'm
still learning the best way to use it, as it's rather different than the Packetshaper.

The (low-volume) mailing list of Packetlogic users can be found at
pktlogic-edu () oberlin edu ;-)

We've never had the budget to really look at HA configurations. Both Packeteer and Procera
have been swift in sending us replacement units (our first demo Packetlogic was bounced
around a bit in shipment), and we expect to suffer through a bit and wait it out should
the box fail. (Of course there's still the old Packetshaper on the shelf...)

--
Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth,
and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species.
-- Cal Frye, Network Administrator, Oberlin College
   Mudd Library, x.56930 -- CIT will NEVER ask you for your password!

   www.calfrye.com,  www.pitalabs.com

"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. --George Eliot.