NetSuds January 2003 Monthly Report

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        1.0 Heard on the Net
        2.0 Jobs in the "com and .com" Market
        3.0 NetSuds and MedicalSuds Calendars - FREE POSTINGS
        4.0 Tidbits
               4.1    NetSuds on Tour - Unimax
               4.2    Email Advertising
               4.3    Junk Mail - Part 2
               4.4    251st Monthly Breakfast Networking Meeting
               4.5    Marriott Launches Wireless Internet Access at 400 USA Hotels
               4.6    Employee Attitudes & Opinions of Management
               4.7    e-folio
               4.8    URLs For Sale
               4.9    US Internet Kudos
               4.10 Matt's Predictions for 2003
        5.0  Calendar of Events
        6.0  Computer Malware: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
        7.0 NetSuds CEO Roundtable - Starting January 2003
        8.0 Decimating Competition
        9.0 Choosing a Web Conferencing Solution
       10.0 Route Control - Taking Control of your Internet Routing
       11.0 Guest Writers for this Report

1.0 Heard on the Net

1.1 People on the Move:

Please email: people@netsuds.com to report a change in your job status if you are moving from or to a company in the "com or .com" space. Include your new work contact information, not just your personal contact information. We do not accept press release changes from third parties. We must hear directly from the person who is 'on the move'.

NetSudser Terri Naughtin left Andcor Companies on December 13, 2002 and joined Volition Advisory Group on January 1, 2003. Contact Terri at either tnaughtin@volitionadvisory.com or 952.912.9500.

NetSudser Brad Schmid has joined St. Paul Agency as of December 1, 2002. Contact Brad at either brad@stpaulagency.com or 651.488.0789 x26.

MedicalSudser Ron Foy has launched his business and website - MCCG Strategy & Analytics www.mccgsa.com - recently. Contact Ron at either ron.foy@mccgsa.com or 952.697.3550.

NetSudser Paul DeBettignies has left his position at Larry's List where he was the Director of Sales. He is returning to e-Strategies Group as the Managing Partner and Technical Recruiter. He can be contacted at partner@e-strategiesgroup.com or at 651-644-3344.

NetSudser Bruce Fogelberg has joined Computer Horizons as a Business Development Executive. Contact Bruce at either 612.359.7206 or bfogelberg@computerhorizons.com.

NC NetSudser Toby Sarver has joined SciQuest as a Senior Architect. Contact Toby at either tsarver@sciquest.com or 919.659.2143.

NetSudser Scott Heimes has left Virtucom Content Solutions where he was CEO. Mike Jacobs has resumed the CEO role. Mike may be reached at either 952.858.5800 x14 or mjacobs@virtucomcsi.com.

NetSudser Paul Wilhoit has joined Reside LLC (www.reside.biz), a contact management and web development group, as VP Contact Management Solutions. Prior to joining Reside, Paul served as Manager, CRM Implementation Services for Fulcrum Consulting Group. You can reach Paul at pwilhoit@reside.biz or 651-503-8399.

NetSudser Ronald Petri has joined General Dynamics - Advanced Information Systems in Bloomington as a Subcontract Program Manager. Ronald may be reached at either 952.921.6116 or ronald.petri@gd-ais.com.

Alex Chavarria has been appointed the Client Service Officer for Silicon Valley Bank in SVB's Minneapolis office. He was most recently the Financial Center Sales Manager for Liberty Savings Bank in Colorado. Alex may be reached at either 952.525.2223 or achavarr@svbank.com.

Mark Boddy, Ph.D. has left Honeywell and joined Adventium Labs in Minneapolis as a Member of the Technical Staff. He can be reached at mark.boddy@adventiumlabs.org.

Former Aravox CEO (for a few months anyway) Bill Rich has been appointed CEO of another St. Paul Venture Capital-backed company; Pingtel in Massachusetts. Contact Bill at 1-800-PINGTEL.

2.0 Jobs in the "com and .com" Market

Please email: jobs@netsuds.com to report job openings in the "com and .com" Market. In the body of the message, give the name of the company and a URL link to the job postings.

The web calendars for NetSuds and MedicalSuds continue to grow in popularity as more and more people use them for the definitive place to find high-tech events in the Twin Cities. The calendars are free to use for both tracking events and for posting your own events. To post events, login as "guest" with a password of "guest". The Calendars are accessed at

Non-Minnesota companies conducting events in Minnesota will not be allowed to post events for free. Events posted to either of these calendars are not immediately available for viewing. All events will be marked "pending" and will be reviewed for content prior to public viewing.

4.3 Junk Mail - Part 2

Last month, I wrote about the proliferation of junk mail and junk email. The State's "Do Not Call" list has potential analogies in the world of email and US mail. My article spawned this response.

Matt,

I read with interest your blurb about the opt-out telemarketing list. You asked how long before snail mail and email opt-out lists become a reality. These lists are available today. If you go to www.reduce.org, a site run by the State of Minnesota, you can find ways to opt out of junk mail lists. Unfortunately, you need to opt out of physical junk mail by sending a snail mail (they wouldn’t want to make it too easy, now, would they?) to the Direct Marketing Association, and participation by marketers in honoring your request is voluntary. The DMA also runs an opt-out service for email (http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumers/optoutform_emps.shtml), which is also voluntary. I’m on it and I can’t say I’ve seen any decrease in spam.

The reduce.org site also offers ways to stem the pre-approved credit card torrent, and for getting off the lists of mail list brokers and national mailers.

One thing I think your readers might want to know is that the very worst way to get off junk email lists is to reply to a junk email. Unscrupulous marketers love this – it shows the email address is in use – and doing so will likely increase the amount of junk email you get.

One way to deal with junk email is to find an email provider or ISP who uses a spam filter such as Spam Assassin (http://www.spamassassin.org). Such filters assign each email a score based on a variety of factors (http://www.spamassassin.org/tests.html) based on the email’s content and originator. You can set the score threshold for identifying spam. Emails that exceed the threshold are marked as spam in their subject line before they are forwarded to you. You can then use your email program (for example, Outlook or Eudora) to route spam to a special folder for quick examination and deletion. I’ve written a white paper entitled How to Use Microsoft Outlook to Deal with Spam that instructs users in how to accomplish this using Outlook 2000 (http://www.ctomentor.com/email/outlookspam.htm).

If your ISP does not use a spam filter, email them to request it. Since mine started using Spam Assassin, my inbox is no longer cluttered with Viagra and home loan pitches. It takes just a minute a day to quickly scan my spam folder and bulk delete the spam.

Unfortunately, until better enforcement policies and techniques evolve, the amount of spam we get is likely to increase exponentially. It will take real laws – worldwide – and real penalties with real enforcement before we are likely to be free of this scourge.

http://www.moea.state.mn.us/campaign/junkmail/index.html

Mike Ellsworth, Stratvantage Consulting, LLC, 952-525-1584, mellsworth@stratvantage.com, www.stratvantage.com

4.4 251st Monthly Breakfast Networking Meeting

That's right ... over 20 years of "Entrepreneurs Breakfasts" in Massachusetts. Here's the rest of the announcement.

www.128vcg.com (For private investors seeking early contact with emerging business ventures)

Date: Dec 12, Time: 7:15 AM, Place: Best Western, TLC, Waltham, Exit 27A off Rt.95 / 128, 477 Totten Pond Road

Topic: How To Raise $100 Million Today!

Speakers: Stanley N. Lapidus, Venture Partner of Flagship Ventures, Ralph Grabowski, Marketing VP

Stan Lapidus is a renowned engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. Prior to joining Flagship in 2002, Stan founded EXACT Sciences in 1995, served as CEO and is now Chairman of the Board. Prior to EXACT he founded Itran and Cytyc Corporations.

Flagship Ventures, founded in 1999, is a $400M entrepreneurship and venture capital firm comprised of a family of funds: OneLiberty Funds, AGTC Funds and NewcoGen Group.

Mr. Grabowski will examine why Stan has been so successful. ............

Regular on-site door registrations (no credit cards) are: ____$45.Entrepreneur, ____ $50.Capital, ____ $50.Management, ____$55.Services/Consultant

4.5 Marriott Launches Wireless Internet Access at 400 USA Hotels

The following was posted on the Marriott hotels website on December 18, 2002.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Dec. 18, 2002 – Marriott International, Inc. (NYSE:MAR) announced today that it plans to install wireless high-speed internet access at 400 hotels in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. It is the largest deployment of wireless high-speed internet access in the hotel industry, and the new service will be available at select Marriott, Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, Fairfield Inn and SpringHill Suites hotels. Marriott is working with STSN, Marriott’s preferred high-speed internet access provider, to offer the service. High-speed wireless service will be available in hotel lobbies, meeting rooms and public spaces and will complement the current in-room high-speed internet access.

The announcement comes after an extensive 7-month test, conducted by Marriott and STSN, involving the San Francisco Marriott, San Francisco Airport Marriott, Irvine Marriott, Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown, and Residence Inn Salt Lake City Cottonwood. “Many of our guests have expressed an interest in wireless internet access. Providing business travelers and meeting attendees the ability to work in a wireless environment with convenient online access during conferences and group meetings creates a distinct competitive advantage,” said Lou Paladeau, Marriott’s vice president of technology business development.

To access wireless high-speed internet access at a Marriott property, the guest simply turns on a wireless-enabled laptop and accesses the Internet. A purchase page then appears on the computer screen and customers can enter their billing information. Complete instructions on how to access Marriott’s high-speed wireless service are available at www.stsn.com. The service will also be supported by a 24-hour, toll-free customer assistance line. Pricing for the new wireless service is under review and has not been announced.

Editor’s Note: Interviews available with Lou Paladeau, Marriott’s VP, technology business development.

4.6 Employee Attitudes & Opinions of Management

Great research report on employee attitudes & opinions from a NetSudser ... http://www.netsuds.com/docs/WorkUSA2002.pdf

4.7 e-folio

From www.efoliomn.com : Use this site to create your personal online electronic portfolio ("e-folio"). An e-folio is like an online resume, but even better. Your e-folio is an online storage and display tool for your education, training and career related data. Because it lives on the Web, you can access it or add content to it at any time from almost any Internet connection in the world. The e-folio system is fun to use. It’s easy to add and change your content to reflect your personal skills, interests, knowledge and goals. You can also invite people such as employers, teachers or students to visit and review your entire e-folio site or only a password protected section of your site.

The "Minnesota e-folio^TM" project is supported by the Minnesota State Colleges and University System (MNSCU) and Avenet, a Minnesota based company. The e-folio system was specially designed to meet the needs of students, workers and educators in Minnesota.

We hope you enjoy your e-folio!

The e-folio product is available only to Minnesota residents and students enrolled in Minnesota schools. Please review carefully the terms of use. You may not use an e-folio for any illegal purpose. You alone are responsible for content and links from your e-folio site. In order to use the "e-folio" tool, you must agree to these and all other terms of use, as well as all applicable state and federal laws and regulations. Any e-folio found to be in violation of the terms of use or any applicable state or federal law or regulation will be deleted without recourse.

4.8 URLs For Sale

4.9 US Internet Kudos

The NetSuds/MedicalSuds Calendars and *yet to be announced* portal are being hosted on a Linux Server at US Internet. While the move of the server was not without its problems, Jason Prock and his team at US Internet resolved networking issues quickly and successfully. As Jason said, "If I can't fix your problem, any problem, within 24 hours, I'm buying you dinner anywhere you choose." Part of me wanted Jason to fail but he came through in less than an hour. To hear his side of the story, contact Jason at jasonp@usinternet.com.

4.10 Matt's Predictions for 2003

1. ADC will be sold in pieces.
2. IT hiring boomlets will occur in select markets and within select companies.
3. Medtech will dominate the business headlines and business activities in Minnesota.
4. IT consulting firms will merge forming a half dozen top Twin Cities players.
5. VoIP, wireless & mobile and handheld computing will dominate IT trends.
6. UofM stem cell research will enter early stages of commercialization.
7. SPAM will reach an all-time high.
8. The legislature and Gov. Pawlenty will enact dramatic educational, tax and business reforms affecting technology.
9. Qwest will be fined at record levels in Minnesota.
10. A wireless start-up will be funded from southern Minnesota.

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

5/19- Minnesota Venture Capital Conference - Minneapolis, MN
20 http://www.mnvcc.com/

“Computer virus” has unfortunately become part of our common vocabulary. Viruses, however, are only one type of malicious software, or malware, one of the biggest sources of financial risk associated with the Internet. A deeper understanding of the three flavors of malware and their defining characteristics can give you a better grasp of the real threats they pose.

Malware Defined

The three basic types of malware are: viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Anti-virus software maker McAfee has compiled a database of over 57,000 examples of malware, and their cost runs into the multiple billions of dollars each year. Let's look at each variety.

Viruses

Virus, the most common form, needs a host program in order to operate. One example is the Melissa (or Mailissa or Malissa) virus that propagated via email and infected Microsoft Word files. A potent virus, Melissa not only deleted documents , but it also deleted key system files required for the proper functioning of the computer. Melissa was highly disruptive and costly; the International Computer Security Association (ICSA) estimated its global financial impact at US$385 million.

Worms

The term virus is sometimes misapplied, as in the case of the I Love You virus, which was, in fact, a worm. Worms do not require a host program. Instead, they can make copies of themselves and spread rapidly, effectively clogging up the Internet. The I Love You worm worked this way, replicating and mailing itself to an infected machine's entire Outlook address book. According to ICSA, the global damage of I Love You and its variants was as much as US$10 Billion.

Trojan horses

Like the gift of the ancient Greeks to Troy chronicled in The Iliad, Trojan horse software is not what it seems to be. One Trojan horse, popular several years ago, was an electronic St. Patrick's Day greeting card with a hidden objective. While animated leprechauns danced on screen, the recipients' QuickenÔ financial software security and account information was being transferred over the Internet to the Philippines. The account information was later used to move small amounts of money from hundreds of thousands of bank accounts to accounts in the Philippines. The financial impact of this malware was less than US$10 per individual, yet the sum of all transfers was likely in the millions.

Virus Hoaxes

Almost as bad as actual malware that compromises your information or uses your system for malicious purposes are virus hoaxes –rumors that cause disruption and lost productivity on a scale similar to an actual attack.

Consider, for instance, the so-called Good Times virus. Word of the “virus” spread widely via email through the forwarding efforts of individuals well known to each other. The email was the only thing that existed–the virus it described did not. The email warned, among other things "If the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop -which can severely damage the processor if left running that way too long." Huh? Pure rubbish, in fact, but for non-technical PC users a serious scare that stole productive time.

There is no financial estimate for the resources expended on Good Times, but one thing is certain: the email took a lot less time and expertise to write than an actual virus would have required.

What You Can Do to Protect Yourself

The best approach is to have commercial virus protection software, e.g., Macafee or Norton, installed on each and every laptop and desktop computer in the organization. The anti-virus software must be kept up to date, at times on a daily basis. Most good virus checkers automate this function when they connect to the Internet.

Users also need to exercise caution. They should be leery of email with attachments from unknown persons and notice unusual software performance–anything that is "not quite right." Organizations need clear guidelines and a well-publicized procedure for reporting suspected problems.

Conclusion

When it comes to computer malware, what you don't know can hurt you. Designate an individual within your organization, regardless of your organization's size, to champion the cause of malware awareness and eradication. Make that individual the ambassador for virus updates and swift problem reporting. The organization will benefit from those efforts and will have an effective virus security blanket.

This column is an excerpt from an upcoming book by James P. Cavanagh, Don Flanagan and James Mecsics entitled Threats & Vulnerabilities: Security and Your Business. Don, Jim and Jim are pre-publishing condensed chapter excerpts as a series of management-focused free security white papers. You can retrieve the free security white papers from:

www.consultant-registry.com/cgi-script/CSMailto/forms/freewhitepapers.htm

NetSuds is initiating CEO Roundtables. The first meetings of the 3 CEO Roundtables have been scheduled for January 21, 22 and 23. Unfortunately, all Roundtables are full. We will be initiating another Roundtable in April 2003. If you are tech or medtech CEO and want to join us in April (the first session is free), contact matt.noah@netsuds.com. A synopsis of the CEO Roundtable can be found at www.netsuds.com/ceo/ It is repeated here as well.

Membership Only CEOs of tech and medtech companies are allowed to join the NetSuds CEO Roundtable. If you are a VP, CxO or President, you are not welcome unless you also hold the CEO title. Perhaps we will start a CFO, CTO or COO Roundtable but until then, we are only interested in the top dog, the CEO. If you are interested in becoming a member, contact matt.noah@netsuds.com. Membership is not automatic. There must be an available spot open in the roundtable. You must have employees. Your company must be incorporated. Your company must be a tech (communications, IT, Internet) or medtech (medtech, biotech, life sciences) company. You must pay a yearly fee in advance. You may not send substitutes to the Roundtable.

Roles Unlike the days of knights, kings and Camelot, there is no king of the NetSuds CEO Roundtable; only a facilitator; Matt Noah, CEO of NetSuds.com, Inc. Knights are replaced by CEOs and the table won't be quite round.

Schedule The Roundtable will meet 10 times per calendar year. Exact dates are not decided upon at this time. Each meeting will last between 1 and 2 hours starting at 7 am. A facility convenient to the majority of Roundtable members will be chosen. Breakfast will be served.

Purpose CEOs need resources to assist them in executing their duties and leading their companies. Boards of Directors and upper management are not always the best or most independent resources upon which to draw. The CEO Roundtable exists to provide CEOs with an independent resource of wisdom and shared experience. Your key 'take-aways' from the Roundtable will be accelerated learning - so as to avoid common and uncommon pitfalls -, an expanded network of advisors and colleagues and tools to enhance the productivity and value of your enterprise.

Content First, networking among the CEO members of a Roundtable is the best and richest content. Second, the Roundtable facilitator will schedule subject matter experts of interest to the CEOs. Examples include intellectual property, branding, sales, engineering, marketing, finance, compensation, human resources, M&A, etc.

Format Meetings will consist primarily of 2 elements. First, "content" will be presented and discussed. Second, "discussion" of common problems and solutions will take place. The facilitator will lead both elements or assign elements to certain CEOs.

Confidentiality Roundtable meetings are completely confidential. Nothing said in a roundtable discussion, short of illegal activity, leaves the meeting. This allows each CEO to feel comfortable discussing issues and subjects he may not feel comfortable speaking about with others.

When beginning the search for a Web conferencing solution, it is important to screen a number of vendors. Visit their website, review live demos, seek client testimonials and, most important, ask questions.

Before taking these steps, be sure to set your objectives, note the features that you require and estimate your monthly budget. Once this is established, be prepared to spend time gathering information from each vendor being considered and attending live demo’s.

1. How many participants do you anticipate attending your online meetings or events?

2. Will the number of participants remain consistent from meeting to meeting or will the number change?

3. How many meeting will be conducted each week, month or quarter? Will usage fluctuate depending on the time of year?

4. What type of content will be presented (Power Point slides, software applications, web-based applications, documents, or spreadsheets)?

5. What degree of interactivity to you require (Q&A, polling/voting, application sharing, text chatting, live video, file sharing, etc.)?

7. How much technical support or event management support do you require (remember, the degree of customer service offered varies greatly from vendor to vendor)?

Now that you’ve determined your requirements, its time to choose a vendor. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Select a pricing model: When you shop for Web conferencing technology, you’ll find a wide range of pricing plans and conditions. Web conferencing typically is priced either on a software user-license basis (pay per seat) or per minute of usage (pay per use).

· Pay per use: you pay only for the time you and your attendees spend in Web conferences.

· Pay per seat: you pay a flat monthly fee for a certain number of concurrent users (“seats”).

At first glance the tradeoff may seem simple, however, the answer is far more complicated. Some additional considerations are:

Minimum number of seats: Most vendors require that you buy a minimum of five seats in a pay-per-seat license model. For example, at $100 per seat, your monthly cost is $500.

Contracts: Most pay-per-seat plans require a term commitment ranging from three months to one year. If you are beginning to use Web conferencing for the first time, you will most likely not make full use of your pay per seat plan in the first month or two, but you will pay the full amount anyway. You are also obligated to pay if you determine that the technology does not meet your requirements. With pay-per-use, you have more flexibility to make sure the technology meets your needs in a live environment and your costs grow with your actual usage.

Set up fees: Many vendors charge a set up fee for pay-per-seat pricing (usually ranging from $1,000 - $4,000). Amortized over the first year of the service, these fees increase the monthly pay-per-seat cost. These fees can be negotiated particularly if you are purchasing a large number of seats. Very few pay-per-use plans require a set-up fee.

Overage charges: In a pay-per-seat model, when the number of concurrent users exceeds the number of seats licenses you purchased, your vendors will apply an overage charge. For example, if you have a five-seat license and conduct a Web meeting with 10 users, you will have to pay for those extra five attendees. These charges are typically charged by a fraction of an hour and can cost as high as $15 per quarter hour. Pay-per-use plans let you include as many attendees as you want at the same per minute price.

2. Make sure it’s easy to use: Most vendor brochures list the same set of features and functionality. The real difference between most solutions comes down to how well it functionally works, reliability and usability. Ask to demo the service as both a participant and meeting host. In each scenario, test each of the features to see how well they work and how easy they are to use. Ask the vendor if free trials are available.

3. Get the features you need: Some Web conferencing solutions only support online presentations, while others offer full-featured packages that include polling, chatting, application-sharing, white boarding and group Web surfing. Do you seek the ability to archive the event for playback? Make sure the product meets your needs.

4. Check into customer support levels: Is training and ongoing technical support available? What hours? Is there an extra fee? Is there a telephone number available so that you can contact a support person or is only e-mail support offered? What are their support hours? Call each vendors customer service number and see if you get a live person vs. a menu or voice mail. You don’t want to be in a situation where an attendee has technical problems joining a critical meeting and not be able to contact a live support person immediately.

5. Consider security requirements: Depending on the audience and the information being shared, security might be a concern. Most solutions are secure enough and do not store meeting data any place except on the presenter’s PC. Participants only see a graphical representation of the data through a standard Web browser. Some services provide passcode authorization, basic encryption, and the ability to lock and unlock the meeting.

Pay-per-use pricing is the better conservative choice for most companies learning how to leverage Web conferencing for their business. You avoid set up fees and you don’t have monitor the number of concurrent users in order to avoid overage charges. You can always start with a pay-per-use plan and switch to a pay-per-seat plan once there is a clear, long-term financial advantage.

by NetSudser Bruce Bahlmann (bruce@alopa.com), Director of technical market development for Alopa Networks (www.alopa.com) and owner of the broadband technical information site Birds-Eye (www.birds-eye.net).

The use and popularity of multihoming is increasing in response to the need to provide reliable and low latency service for e-commerce. Just as those Internet businesses that have recently multihomed begin to rest easy, another ripple in the Internet fabric is forcing these companies to revisit their networks once again. This latest problem has to do with the fact that the Internet is a loose confederation of interconnected networks (see figure 1.0) that rely on self-serving information provided by Internet Service Providers (ISP). The ISPs have a monetary incentive to make their networks look better then the competition. If you choose their path, you pay them more money. Multihoming insures traffic has at least two paths (choices) that result in at least two, self-serving, opinions of which is the best path. However, these opinions leave business with the famous “trust but verify” dilemma. Which path should I pick? Should I rely on the information provided by the ISPs who have a stake in the outcome? Can I trust that they (ISP or service provider) are working in my best interest? Or, should I attempt to verify their claim with my own measurements to insure I am getting the best possible path at this moment for my customers.

To compound matters, the validity of the information provided about routing is time dependent but once distributed throughout the Internet it is rarely updated by the ISPs. Each service provider has a time varying load imposed on the their network that causes a change latency experienced by traffic on their network throughout the day. Compound this with scheduled and unscheduled maintenance; the customer experience over time is unpredictable at best.

Being multihomed ensures that there are at least two or more paths that traffic can take as it flows between content source and consumer. The ripple in the Internet fabric is that no two paths are equal over time. One path could be faster at 10:00 am and slower at 3:00 pm. One path could have substantial packet loss due to network maintenance at a critical trading time for your business. If your Internet business is time critical, for example stock trading, not capitalizing on the fastest possible paths between you and your customers, at all times, will ultimately sacrifice the speed of your service (and satisfaction of your customers). For some Internet businesses, performance is negotiable, but the value of multihoming can be enhanced beyond reliability if managing multiple routes can done in real time.

Beyond the Original Design of the Internet

As shown in Figure 1.0 the Internet does a fairly good job of automatically routing traffic between any two points. If any one network goes down the Internet can self-heal by re-routing traffic around these problem areas. The Internet also provides a means for service providers to support multiple access points – essentially supporting multihoming through its use of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP is the de facto exterior routing protocol for the Internet. Essentially BGP has the ability to learn routes to destinations out on the Internet and then use this information when its forwarding traffic to those destinations. BGP selects the best route to these destinations using a decision process where by the router considers a number of criteria and then selects the best path based on that criteria. Some of these criteria include:

· Prefer the route with the largest weight (a proprietary feature of one router vendor)

· If the local preference is the same, or if no route was originated by the local router, prefer the route with the shortest autonomous system path.

Although it is beyond the scope of this article to review this decision process in detail, the purpose for introducing it is to convey that nearly all of the BGP decision criteria are static. It is mainly based on things like hop count or the number of autonomous systems a particular path traverses – this information does not change. So while the Internet continually changes (backbone links become saturated, etc.), the path your traffic takes across the Internet (by in large) does not take into account these changes. As a result your traffic will not take the most optimum or efficient path (e.g. the path with the least latency and packet loss) to its destination because modern day routers are not smart enough maintain this information. One could also argue that routers needn’t ever be this smart.

Most Internet businesses are intimately aware of these issues and usually employ some senior routing personnel to combat problems as they arise. Inevitably customers will complain about slow service and often these complaints fall upon the shoulders of the content provider to resolve these matters. However when there are numerous paths that traffic can traverse between any two points on the Internet, the complexity of resolving performance issues can be daunting – often taking weeks of research, testing, calls to service providers, etc. Finding the problem (if and when it repeats itself) is half the battle but finding a permanent solution to the problem regularly exceeds the capacity of even the most senior routing expert. While many companies still employ people to do just this sort of thing (and arguably they do a good job of this) the time is fast approaching when the complexity of this task can no longer be handled manually.

Introduction to Route Control Software

A common misconception here is that BGP (or even routers in general) are broke and need to be fixed. This is not the case. Rather they merely need some augmentation to make them more efficient. Route control, or intelligent routing software provides that assistance by conducting some type of continuous performance measurements (probing) upon a list of frequented Internet prefixes to generate an optimized routing table for each service provider connection. Since all service providers are different (could be Tier One, Tier Two, or Tier Three) their path to a particular destination is also likely to be different. Most route control software vendors don’t stop at measuring network performance when gauging which route traffic should take. They take other external matters under consideration such as contract limitations, bandwidth costs, time of day, day of month or week, cheapest burst rates, monthly totals of traffic, etc. - all in a effort to deliver the best value, performance, or both to the Internet business owner.

Limitations of Route Control Software

While the Internet operates bi-directionally, most all route control software doesn’t. When route control software computes an optimized path for traffic that path is usually optimized in one direction (from the source where the route control software is located to the destination of where the data is headed). However the inability (in most cases) to optimize the path of incoming traffic may not be a significant limitation. If you adhere to the notion that most all Internet traffic is downloaded (as opposed to uploaded) the need for Internet businesses to optimize the downstream path to their customers is perhaps of the most importance.

Scalability is also a limitation for many route control software vendors. Most all have built quite large platforms but how well these platforms scale into the Gigabit Ethernet speeds that increasingly more enterprise markets carry is a rising concern. The nice thing about route control software is that whether or not it continues to work it wont restrict the flow of data through your network. That is because it runs along-side your existing routers to help them route more effectively. If this service goes down for whatever reason, your routers will continue to work using paths learned from the last successful update rather than real-time updated paths. The scalability must merely address the increasing number of prefixes rather than keep up with the speed ongoing data traffic. Having route control software work in this way (as opposed to it running within a router) helps maximize your routers’ horsepower for routing packets rather than determining the best path.

Uses of Route Control Software

The two most common applications of route control software are enterprise VPN and web traffic. VPN services optimize paths for traffic destine for remote offices. Most VPN product offerings also feature a scaled down appliance for placement at the remote facility. These smaller appliances only can optimize a subset of available Internet prefixes but this capability is more than sufficient to connect up with the company headquarters along with several remote employees. A larger appliance sits at the corporate headquarters and facilitates communications with these remote offices as well as the Internet as a whole.

Web traffic is representative of the content generated by an Application Service Provider (ASP), a search engine, or perhaps even a broadband service provider. In the case of the broadband service provider the amount of data leaving their network is small as opposed to the amount of data coming into their network. However, a need still exists to optimize broadband service providers’ multihomed connections to the Internet. Broadband service providers represent a kind of hybrid between the VPN application used by enterprise and the web traffic used by Internet businesses. Broadband service providers appear as an enterprise VPN application when it requires connectivity, cost, and traffic management. Broadband service providers appear as a web application when they offer up unique (home grown) content to customers within their networks, peers’ networks, or somewhere else out on the Internet.

Banking a return on an investment (ROI) in route control software can vary depending on a number of things including: the type of business (content provider, broadband service provider, ISP, etc.), amount of traffic, and the number of local multihoming options available. For example, if you’re a captive audience for Internet connectivity with limited available local options the value of route control software will be diminished. Likewise if you don’t experience much traffic (10Mbps or less) the value of this software is also diminished. Withstanding these limitations, actual customers of route control software have seen any where from 3-12 month return on investment in practice. This translates into shorter return on investments for larger Internet companies - those carrying large amounts of traffic or supporting numerous (3 or more) Internet connections.

However broadband service providers elect to cope with the increasing instability within the Internet service provider arena, two things are clear. First is that broadband service providers must seek multihoming to protect their service from unforeseen catastrophic failure. The second thing is that once multihomed, the sophistication of managing and optimizing these links goes beyond what most individuals can handle (no matter how skilled they are with BGP). Route control software provides the intelligence these multihomed networks require to capitalize on the increasingly commoditized Internet connectivity.

It is important to understand that the true value of route control software is not cost savings and that realizing any cost savings could be difficult to observe in practice (even though vendors have gone to great lengths to show their products can save you money). The true value of route control software is performance improvement that translates into a higher quality user experience for your customers. If you need to cost justify quality service to your customers route control software will always seem like an unnecessary expense unless you’re a large enough service provider make it pay rewards beyond performance gains.