1.2 Companies on the Move:

Please email:  start-ups@netsuds.com to report (1) the formation of a new start-up, (2) momentum change at an existing start-up, (3) addition of key hires, or (4) a funding event at a start-up.  We do not accept press release changes from third parties.  We must hear directly from an executive at the company which is 'on the move'.

Gearworks has hired former Packeteer VP Todd Krautkremer to be SVP of Marketing and Business Development at Gearworks in St. Paul.

Misukanis & Rodgers is evolving - beginning with a new partner and a new name. Lee Odden has become a partner in the agency and the agency will now be called Misukanis & Odden (www.misukanisodden.com).  For more information contact either Susan Misukanis - 952-400-0191 or smisukanis@misukanisodden.com - or Lee Odden - 952-400-0192 or lee@misukanisodden.com.

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	12150 Nicollett Avenue, Burnsville Approximately 37,000 sq. ft. medical manufacturing facility with 10,000 square feet of class 10,000 cleanroom Gary Lally, Hoyt Properties, 952.938.3418

4.1 NetSuds on Tour

NetSuds loves on-site tours!  Email me if you want to show off your company.  I can be reached at matt@netsuds.com. No tours this month.

4.2  Email Advertising

The Business Journal reported that their daily email news reaches 5000 Twin Cities executives.  The MHTA claims a little over 2000 people on their email list.  Not bad but still a great deal less than the NetSuds and MedicalSuds email lists which reach 7200+ (yes, the lists are growing).  The NetSuds email lists are double-opt-in and concentrated on professionals in the communications, IT and Internet markets.  The MedicalSuds email lists are double-opt-in and concentrated on professionals in the medtech, biotech and life sciences markets.  So, rather than spend your advertising dollars on any other email lists in the Twin Cities, consider the NetSuds and MedicalSuds lists.  Contact matt@netsuds.com or 612.279.2154.

5.0  Schedule of Events

You can also try our new online calendar by clicking here for NetSuds and here for MedicalSuds.

5.1  Minnesota  

8.0  Time Bandits

by NetSudser Dave Shepherdson, CEO, Phenomenal Networks, djs@phenomenalnetworks.com

Where does the time go? We all wonder about this but non-more so than the IT managers. Not only are there not enough hours in the day but there also does not seem to be enough bandwidth in their systems to improve the delivery of data at an effective rate. So what can be done?

There are many articles about “Time theft” but these usually focus on how employees find ways to “minimize” their daily contributions by elongated bathroom breaks, private phone calls, etc. 

“Bandwidth theft” is another area that has attracted many words but here the focus is mostly on how individuals or companies extract data from current web sites and use that to their own, cheap advantage.

Our Time Bandits are a relatively new breed. Wander among the cubicles of almost any enterprise and you will either see people with headsets gently stomping to their favorite web radio station or even hear music direct from the cool speakers of their PC’s. Hopefully this provides for a happier and so more productive employee but what about the effect on the network they are connected to? 

Of course many of them are also surfing the web – often as part of their job function but not always – and what cumulative effect does have on the overall network performance? Napster is dead but replaced by many other look-alikes such as Kazaa.

How many employees may snatch a few minutes to down load their latest favorite tracks and how does that impact the network response time?

Recent industry measurements show that all of these “non-productive” activities can soak up as much as 28% of the available bandwidth in any enterprise system. This is an average so, at some points in a day, the total non-company useable bandwidth could peak to much higher levels and so compromise company critical tasks and data flow.

Of course every company and IT manager has put in policies and some safeguards but often there is no actual management or measurement of the effects on the system.

There have been many statements in the past that bandwidth is essentially free but most financial officers will disagree when they get the monthly communications bills. If it were free, then adding more bandwidth would be a great solution but, if not, there needs to be another solution. 

First enterprises need to get a handle on the extent of the problem. Today, there are non-intrusive ways of measuring the traffic and potential bottlenecks on both the LAN and WAN areas of company networks. These methods can be used to determine where the traffic problems are down to the level of even each node or PC on the system and over any typical working period.

Once this is achieved, an analysis will provide the data to design an improved system to include new policies, managed links and routers etc. Hardware and software components can be put in place to set and manage parameters that will ensure sufficient bandwidth availability for all tasks depending upon the level of priority set. Mission critical data will always get top priority  - and of course the IT management staff will be able to set their own high level to ensure their own access.

Experience from use of such managed systems is that not only can the system performance be substantially improved, but also “spare” bandwidth can be created which may be used to implement new productivity solutions. These applications can be everything from providing Voice over IP to instituting a low cost, video conferencing system.

The bandwidth theft described here is just one aspect of compromise in the workplace. Of course there is another major issue of company liability when employees download music or pornography. This is the subject of another article but the tools mentioned here can also be applied to management of such potential problems. 

So, are our Time Bandits going to be less content and productive if we use these systems to take away their entertainment?

Well maybe, but generally the bandwidth management tools do not prevent the “non-productive” use of the networks but just prioritize the traffic to ensure that the enterprise works properly. So music and data can co-exist and swing together.

9.0  Bandwidth, Contention, and Profits

Combating forces working against efficient, profitable delivery of quality data services.

By NetSudser Bruce Bahlmann, Birds-Eye.Net

Whether your company offers data service to businesses, residential consumers, apartment dwellers, or university faculty and staff the effort required to provide quality data services becomes increasingly complex as you add customers or users. Contention is one of the most significant forces working against your efforts to deliver cost effective quality data services to your customers. Contention forces you to use more and more of your available Bandwidth to control who has access to your shared service.

Contention is created when you have a resource that two or more entities want a certain amount of but each entity can only obtain a fraction (if any) of that amount. The phone company works this way – as if everyone in a city picked up his or her phone to call someone only some portion would get through. Most data services are also provided in this fashion, only the level of contention (or over subscription) can become impossible to keep in check. At what level of contention would an average customer begin to complain or become unsatisfied with your service, and begin looking at alternatives? There is no simple answer to this question – however the right answer is “it depends”. It depends on what market your in, where your customers are located (geographically), what day it is, what time it is, how long people typically use the service, whether you charge by the bit or for flat rate, etc.

There is a direct correlation between bandwidth and networking costs. As the bandwidth of links increase, equipment, personnel, and ISP or Internet provider costs also increase. Typically the slowest link is the one you need to regularly pay for – the link that connects your customers to the Internet. However the size of this slowest link ultimately determines how many customers your service can support. For example, lets say you provide services to an MDU and have purchased at T1 from your Internet provider. Depending on how you divide this T1, will determine your profitability. For example you could sell 12 apartment residents a symmetric 128kbs service over that T1 – as a result you have zero contention (very happy customers) because everyone is allotted a dedicated slice of your T1. But how do you squeeze more money out of that T1? You do this by increasing contention.

The phone company uses something like 82% contention – meaning that there are only enough lines available for 18% of its customers to use their phone at the same time. This 82% is based on many years of well-honed usage statistics and seems to work reasonably for all but the most extreme circumstances. Data service is much different from phone service in a positive way in that it can be shared and in a very negative way in that any one customer can entirely consume all (or a major potion) of the available bandwidth.

What kind of contention should you size a data network for? Start with 20% and gradually work your way up to 50%. Beyond 50% you may be playing with fire as when you pass 50% it requires constant vigilance of your network engineers in order to maintain reasonable customer satisfaction. Using 50% contention in our earlier example of the T1, we can calculate the number of customers such a network could support:

0% contention = bandwidth / service = 1,536 bps / 128 bps = 12 customers

50% contention = (1 + %Contention/100) * (bandwidth / service)

                          = (1 + 50/100) * (1,536 bps / 128 bps) = 18 customers

Before the telecom meltdown, most large ISPs sized their links for 50% contention. By using this 50% mark, ISPs were able to leave enough headroom for the uncorrelated usage spikes that happen daily on shared networks. Now that the bottom has fallen out of the market, the amount of contention is being pushed well beyond 50% to the point where it is beginning to impact service quality and customer satisfaction on a daily basis. If you relate this to the 88% contention used by phone companies, running a network in excess of 50% contention is similar to building a phone network that would max out each day when people returned home from work. Imagine what your satisfaction for your phone service would be if you would hear the words “all circuits are busy, try again later” on a regular basis.

Rural area data networks could probably get away with contention as high as 88 percent - especially if they have a captive audience (the only alternative is dialup). However, in larger cities and metropolitan areas where alternative options are numerous your best bet is to provide quality service at a competitive price now over trying to improve services at the 11^th hour. If you must keep contention in check how do you turn a buck?

Think of this purchased bandwidth as a leaky bucket you want to keep draining. Your Internet provider supplies a steady stream of water to keep the bucket full and each leak represents a customer using the service. As long as the water level is decreasing (but not empty) you are making money. When everyone is offline, the water coming into the bucket spills over the top – result, wasted opportunity to capitalize on your bandwidth investment. There are few providers that seem to exploit the concept of continually using the bandwidth they have purchased. Your challenge for profitability in this space is to diversify. Rather than relying on a one dimensional offering that serves only individual subscribers for all your income, look at patterns of usage to determine when your bandwidth is idle (no contention), then execute plans to exploit your bandwidth in other ways at those idle times. Make your goal to sell your bandwidth 24hrs a day, 7 days a week to a range of customers whose usage patterns rarely overlap. For example, when your MDU customers go to work, sell that excess bandwidth to commercial customers. When they go to bed at night, sell that bandwidth to companies offering backup services, etc. Keep your options open and your service offering multi-dimensional. Your quest to diversify your customer base and exploit your available bandwidth is the way to keep your bucket leaky and your profits soaring.

Bruce Bahlmann (info@birds-eye.net) is owner of the broadband technical information site Birds-Eye.Net (www.birds-eye.net).

11.0  Guest Writers for This Report

I have opened up the Monthly NetSuds Report to guest writers. If you have a passion for a topic, and you can write (at least no worse than me), send an email to me matt@netsuds.com.  You can even send copies of your work.  It needs to be on "com and .com" topics and can include entrepreneur/investor activities.  Good information from our    service providers and vendors is also welcome so long as it is not a "commercial" for any one company or individual.

We will consider both sponsored and unsponsored columnists and guest writers.

If you are aware of others who would like to receive the NetSuds Report, ask them to visit http://www.netsuds.net/mail.htm to subscribe or unsubscribe.

Please send your comments and feedback regarding this issue of the NetSuds Report to matt@netsuds.com.

Matt Noah

980 Lake Susan Hills Drive
Chanhassen, MN  55317

612.279.2154
fax:  425.795.2019
matt@netsuds.com

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