Off subject, but I think this is good for RMBS. With the managed data flow comes the need for greater bandwidth. This article may let you feel more confident about CHKPF.
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Monday , Feb 16, 1998 Sun-Thu at 18:00 (GMT+3)
Internet
They Say It's The Next Killer
By Neora Shem-Shaul
Lately they have tried to push multimedia
and Internet video conferencing calls on us,
as if they have forgotten what a small
modem we have. We've started to complain
about the poor performance. Then they tell
us, forget the modem, try new technologies.
So now we have Internet via ISDN cable, or
frame-relay. When it works well, a bit faster
than an ordinary modem, we still sit and
wait.
We wait, for instance, because lines
transferring data from one side of the
country to the other are overloaded and
blocked. Sometimes, also the lines abroad
cannot handle the load. And we sit, and wait,
and wait.
You know what, we're prepared to pay more,
just so the Internet line will move faster.
For example, wouldn't it be nice if those
working under a deadline in a large
organisation had priority access to the
Internet? Or, for example, if I go to the same
site every time I access the Net, say stock
market quotes site, and this site has a lot of
graphics which take hours to download.
Wouldn't it be nice if I could get priority
access from my home to this specific site?
Naturally I would pay another $10, but I
would get there faster than my neighbour.
At the annual conference of the Israeli
Internet Association held this week, the
introductory lecture was devoted to the hot
topic of "Quality of Service" or QoS.
Today's cost accounting method tends to a
fixed price package offering unlimited use.
The investment in infrastructure is enormous,
and the anticipated large profits from
commerce and advertising on the web, have
not yet materialised. This means the only
way ISP can get ahead is by offering
premium services at graduated prices. This is
not just a matter of a revolution in
performance of some 20%, but also savings
for the ISP. It is a fundamental economic
change in Internet marketing and service.
Many recent surveys focus on this field, and
several technological developments offer
solutions to the problem, such as foreign
start-ups (Packeteer, Aponet), and two Israeli
companies, TapGuard and Check Point,. The
principle strength of Check Point's product
derives from this company's history, its
success with its data security products, and
its comprehensive knowledge of
sophisticated Internet mechanisms.
TapGuard's main advantage is that it is a
pioneer in the field, with a product that has
already been tried in practice. The other
competitors are just starting out, and do not
offer fully mature products for the new
concept.
TapGuard general manager Alex Azoulai
explains the method used by Band Wizard,
the product his firm developed. "The Band
Wizard's algorithm is based on the 'TCP
window' idea, which enables informing the
party transmitting data the amount of data it
may send. In the current queue system data
arrives at the server, and only then receives
priority after a data transmission line has
already been wasted. While, with the Band
Wizard system, line costs are greatly
reduced".
Band Wizard was developed at Tel-Aviv
University over the past two years, has been
installed there for some time, and it
supervises all the university's internal and
external data transmission. The product has
recently been installed on the network of a
number of Israeli Internet access providers,
such as IBM. The results: saving 20% on
access lines to the US. Thus, if a T1 line
costs $60,000 per month, then an access
provider using this system will save $12,000
per month. Multiply this by each access
providers number of lines, and one gets the
difference between profit or loss on dial-up
subscribers. When there is a profit, there is a
chance support will improve, prices may be
drop, and suddenly unexpected potential in
dormant sections of the Israeli Internet
market may be discovered.
Apart from line savings, the system enables
priority allocation according to criteria. For
example, browsing gets priority over
downloading files. The most significant
response attesting to the effectiveness of the
service came when TapGuard closed down
the system for routine maintenance. Dozens
of messages complained to the support
centre about the decline in performance.
Check Point's vice president for international
operations, Marius Nacht, tells of how this
new sector flourished immediately after the
'gold rush' about data security. "As soon as
solutions were found for data security, which
had occupied many, they then turned to
improving service. This was true also of
standards institutes, who suddenly found the
time to investigate, and announce Statefull
Inspection standards, such as OPSEC, issued
for data protection".
Nacht explained, with regard to analysis and
monitoring tools that form an integral part of
a QoS product, most of us have not yet
developed the right intuition for work on
networks, either inside or outside an
organisation. That is why we need
sophisticated tools to assist us.
Two months ago Check Point launched a
new product, FloodGate 1, to manage data
transmission on organisational networks.
Organisations can now establish an
organisation-wide policy and manage and
control band width in real time and the
distribution of resources. The product
enables users to define guidelines for data
transmission management, allocating band
width resources in real time to incoming and
outgoing transmissions based on their
relative urgency.
"The load on networks from applications
utilising the full band width, such as
multimedia, or push technologies,
complicate the work of the Internet
environment", said Check Point's CEO and
president Gil Shwed. "The attempts to solve
the problem of distributing the band width
by expanding it, not solved the root of the
problem, which is managing resources and
their allocation. We are decreasing overload
exactly at the point it is created, entry to the
web".
FloodGate 1 is based on the IQ Engine, a
new technology developed by Checkpoint
that enables organisations to define in detail
data transmission sorting, place them in a
queue, and assign transmission times by
simultaneously supervising transmission on
the entire network, and not just some
specific transmissions.
Does Check Point again know something
about the Internet market in the coming
years that we don't? |
