Wednesday, October 24, 2001

Colleges Turn to Bandwidth 'Shapers' to Throttle Needless Use By SCOTT CARLSON Baltimore The server room at Loyola College hums and whirs with the energy of thousands of data transactions passing through gray metal boxes and a rainbow of colored wires. John C. McFadden, the college's assistant vice president for technology services, raises his voice against the din to point out an inconspicuous box hidden amid the serpentine wires: Loyola's bandwidth shaper. All of the traffic passing through this room would come to a screeching halt without it. In this age of file-sharing services like KaZaA and Gnutella, bandwidth shapers -- also called "throttlers" or "packet shapers" -- have become vital tools. On the congested information superhighway, the little boxes act as traffic cops, directing some transmissions to high-speed lanes and slowing other transactions to a crawl. Technology managers can program the bandwidth shapers to identify certain types of transmissions, such as MP3 downloads or streaming video, and set rules for dealing with them. Slowing Recreational Traffic Mr. McFadden says Loyola officials "believe in giving students full access to the Internet." However, congestion caused by KaZaA and the like has forced the college to put a priority on certain transmissions. For example, Loyola has about 3,000 graduate students who live off campus and use the network to download assignments and course materials. The college's bandwidth shaper has given those transmissions more room by slowing down some of the recreational traffic During the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Mr. McFadden used the bandwidth shaper to handle the booming traffic. Because telephone lines on the East Coast were congested after the attacks, many students and staff and faculty members turned to e-mail to communicate with friends and families. Loyola's e-mail traffic, which averages around 50,000 messages a day, shot up to 300,000 on September 11. The college's technology staff used the bandwidth shaper to cut down on recreational Web surfing and give a higher priority to e-mail. The devices aren't cheap, running in the tens of thousands of dollars. Loyola paid about $40,000 for both its bandwidth shaper and a parallel firewall, which helps filter viruses out of incoming traffic. Mr. McFadden says they're powered by Check Point Software, but won't disclose the throttler's model number -- there's security in obscurity. "I could bring up several Web sites that show hackers how to get into a system based on the brands of equipment that system uses," he says. Commercial Uses The two leading manufacturers of bandwidth shapers are Packeteer and Allot Communications. The devices were originally created for the commercial world. Banks, for example, use them to slow down huge printing jobs and speed up transactions with customers. The U.S. Navy uses throttlers on ships at sea to give priority to communications for military missions. Officials at Packeteer say that the educational market is growing but still small -- of 14,000 customers, fewer than 400 are colleges or universities. Some of those institutions include the University of Denver and Denison University. Institutions such as Daniel Webster College and Williams College use an Allot NetEnforcer, a leading product in the field. Mark Berman, director of networks and systems at Williams, says the college bought the box in 1999 for less than $15,000. He says he could have saved money by using equipment he already owned -- such as his router, manufactured by Cisco Systems -- to curb MP3 downloads and other recreational traffic. "But setting the router up is pretty complex," he adds. The NetEnforcer is not only easier to set up, but it's also easy to change the rules that govern Internet traffic. "Basically, you plug it in, and it does its thing," he says. "I don't know how anyone can live without them." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Tuition increases at public and private colleges are largest in years, survey reports University group discusses earmarks again, but reaches no agreement MacArthur Foundation names 23 as fellows for 2001 NCAA edges closer to paring several division I-A members Harvard U. will make professors justify their approach to grading Report calls for new efforts to halt academic brain drain from Africa Court orders Web company to name professor behind "Truth at ULM" site Colleges turn to bandwidth "shapers" to throttle needless use 3 companies that sell course software say they are raking in money