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Getting Enough Bandwidth with Better Routing

A common question for network connectivity is "how much bandwidth is enough?" While bandwidth can boil down to upload and download limits from an ISP, the overall question is really one of network speed - how fast is the network connection to the Internet? Network speed is greatly influenced by the routing methods used to direct network traffic; the better the traffic routing, the better the network connection's speed and reliability.

Routing Traffic: BGP

The Internet is made up of millions of individual servers, which are all interconnected, like houses on main streets and bystreets. Some central networks, called backbones, have connections to millions of servers, which makes it easier to send traffic along those routes.

If an ISP is connected to a single Internet backbone, then they only have one route to use to send traffic. However, this means if that backbone goes down, the network connection goes down. For redundancy, most ISPs have connections to at least two backbones, and traffic is routed between those backbones.

When there are multiple backbones to choose from, there has to be some way to identify the most efficient route. The most common routing logic is border gateway protocol (BGP) which counts the number of networks (autonomous system, or AS, hops) that each route has between the starting server and the destination server.

For example, one person wants to send an email from their home account with SBC Global to their friend at MSN. SBC is on one network, and MSN is on another. Route A reports six AS hops between SBC and MSN, and Route B has three AS hops between them. With BGP routing, the traffic is sent on Route B.

Performance-Based Routing

The big limitation of BGP is that it only gauges AS hops rather than other more important factors, like latency. Route B from the last example has only three AS hops, meaning traffic only has to cross three networks to reach its destination. However, BGP routing only counts AS hops - it cannot account for the number of individual routers in an autonomous system. Route B may only cross three networks, but if Network 1 has five routers, Network 2 has four routers, and Network 3 has eight routers, the traffic has to go through 17 routers before it can reach its destination. If Route A crosses six networks but each network only has a single router, the traffic only has to pass through six routers. That means that Route A may be significantly faster than Route B, but BGP routing has no way to recognize that, so it sends traffic down the slower route.

Performance-based routing offsets the limits of BGP, and takes a more intelligent approach to traffic routing, by looking at other factors than AS hops:

?Performance metrics like latency, jitter, and packet loss
?Current network load
?Connection type, such as T1 or OC3

Latency can be either the time to send a packet one-way or the round-trip time, like the time to send ICMP packets (ping) to one server and receive the response. Jitter is the fluctuation in latency times. For example, if the first trip time is 3ms and the next is 105ms and the next is 20ms, there is a large swing between trip times, and, therefore, there is high jitter on the connection. Packet loss is the number of packets (information) which never reach their destination. The current load is how much traffic is currently on that connection, and the connection type indicates how much traffic the network can handle effectively.

By looking at the actual quality of the network connection, performance-based routing can select much faster, more reliable routes.

What Better Routing Really Means

Poor routing can corrupt or interrupt packets, requiring information to be resent and increasing the overall time it takes to do anything on the network. While simple tasks like web browsing may not be affected by poor network performance, a number of vital applications can be impaired by poor routing protocols in ways that may not be apparent in a simple upload/download size summary:

?Any kind of media application, such as streaming video or audio
?Potentially business-critical applications like voice over IP (VoIP) or video conferencing
?Upload and download times
?Email delivery
?Remote network applications like VPNs

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posted by streamyx-90074 @ 11:32 PM 0 comments

Protect Your Kids Online by Not Relying Solely on Your Broadband's Parental Controls

When you sign up with high speed Internet providers, you have to be prepared to protect your children from the dangerous people who go online for immoral and illegal purposes. Kids are web savvy these days, and often make use of communities such as MySpace to communicate with their friends and share information, but that doesn't mean they don't need the watchful eyes of a parent checking up on them.

The following are a few tips for protecting your kids when they go online:

1. Communicate with your kids. This is the best way to keep track of the online activities of your children. However, for younger kids communication is not enough. You'll need to set up parental controls and filters to monitor content. Children under 7 should be supervised at all times when online.

2. Don't sign your kids up for online accounts until they're in high school -- old enough to be more aware of the dangers online. If your teenager has an online account, make sure you can access it yourself to see who your child is talking to. This way you can nip problems in the bud before they develop into something more serious.

3. Set parental controls on your computer's Internet browser according to age, and frequently research the browser's history to see what sites your kids have been visiting. Talk to your kids about the sites they have visited so that they understand you care about their safety.

4. Limit the sites your kids are permitted to visit and set aside time periods when they can use the Internet at home.

5. Tell your kids never to give out personal information online, either to strangers or by filling out a form for a service. Don't allow them to sign up for services without asking you for permission first.

6. Older children will be more reluctant to share information with you. Exercise trust as much as possible, but never stop monitoring their activity. The safety of your kids is too important.

Always follow your gut when setting up parental controls for online surfing. While some DSL broadband providers like At&t and Verizon have decent controls, this simply is not enough. Every child is different, so you have to create limitations and boundaries according to the unique needs of your family. Every few months, sit down as a family and have a meeting about Internet safety. Allowing open dialogue to occur is the best way to foster trust between family members, especially for older children and teenagers.

If your kids are not afraid to approach you with problems and concerns, they will open up more and will be less likely to keep secrets from you. Although high speed Internet providers offer some level of parental controls, you really have to step up to protect your kids and their best interests.

It can be difficult to balance the personal privacy concerns of your children with the need to keep them safe, but it is possible to achieve a happy medium. High speed Internet providers may give you access to the online world, which offers children great resources, but safety is not a given. But if you use the parental control features available on most operating systems and Internet browsers, and continuously monitor your kids' online activity, safety will no longer be a concern.

If you feel this article was useful, you can find more information about high speed internet providers at http://www.high-speed-internet-service-providers.com

JessePreneur is a serial entrepreneur dedicated to helping consumers save money through the use of information on the internet.

posted by streamyx-90074 @ 6:12 AM 0 comments