New capabilities in NetEnforcer include application recognition for multimedia, database, and P2P protocols and new reporting tools, all aimed at making ISPs' business clients happier.

by Wayne Kawamoto [March 20, 2002]

Allot Communications, a provider of policy-based networking solutions, announced new additions to its NetEnforcer product families. New capabilities for application recognition include content inspection for monitoring, classifying, and shaping the traffic of multimedia (Voice and Video over IP using H.323 and RTSP), Oracle, Citrix, and Peer-to-Peer protocols as well as classification of VLAN-based traffic (802.1Q).

In addition, Allot announced a new version of its NetPolicy product, a QoS management suite. The new release includes a Virtual Bandwidth Monitoring utility that should enable subscribers to securely monitor their own bandwidth usage without installing networking equipment. A new reporting tool is designed to help administrators create high-level reports to view employee usage of the Internet, websites employees are visiting, link utilization, busiest users and servers, applications running, and the bandwidth consumption of each application. It also offers reports on overall application performance and network usage, based on Allot NetEnforcer's IP session detail collection.

According to Allot, today's networks are populated with a multitude of applications, both for business and non-business uses. A growing number of users employ video conferencing and voice applications over IP networks. Corporate networks are becoming overloaded with non-business activities such as viewing adult entertainment sites and using Peer-to-Peer applications to download large music and video files. Not only does this lower employee productivity, but it also degrades network performance by using resources such as WAN (wide area network) bandwidth and degrading the performance of other business critical applications such as ERP systems. Therefore, a major challenge to network professionals is to distinguish "true" business-related browsing from all browsing traffic that may include browsing and downloading of "fun" files, such as music and video.

NetEnforcer software version 4.2 is designed to classify HTTP by content type (i.e., MIME field), to conduct deep content inspection of multimedia protocols such as H.323 and RTSP and to fully classify Peer-to-Peer protocols, such as AudioGalaxy, iMesh, KaZaA and Morpheus. With the NetEnforcer, network administrators should be able to differentiate between "fun" traffic disguised as legitimate business traffic and "real" mission-critical traffic.

Allot's NetPolicy should help network professionals produce high-level graphical and tabular reports. NetPolicy is designed to let administrators account for each IP traffic session so that there is no need to predefine rules—as with other solutions. Installed on a Windows 2000 server, the new NetPolicy database collects data from multiple NetEnforcers configured with the optional NetAccountant software. It should then enable network managers to generate smart reports on application performance and traffic session records. In addition to pre-defined reports, administrators can produce customized reports by using third-party tools such as Crystal Reports.

NetPolicy's new Virtual Bandwidth Monitoring module should let ISPs offer their subscribers the ability to view their own hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly bandwidth consumption. Without any equipment installed on-site, subscribers should be able to use the Web to monitor usage of their most critical resource—the WAN link. This, in turn, may help ISPs increase their value proposition and provide an additional source of revenue.

"Our ISP customers have requested new management tools that help them attract and retain business accounts," said Eran Ziv, President of Allot Communications. "Our enterprise customers asked us to support more protocols, including H.323 for video conferencing. With the new releases, Allot is pleased to again be responsive to the needs of its customers and to preserve its reputation as a developer of innovative, high-quality policy-based management solutions."

"Allot's goal is to provide the ISP market with new and innovative solutions that will help ISPs to reduce their networking costs and generate more revenues by offering new services to their subscribers," said Elazar (Azi) Ronen, Executive VP Technology & Marketing, Allot Communications. "In our latest announcement we released a new facility—VBM—Virtual Bandwidth Management which allows ISPs to offer their business customers a way to monitor their bandwidth for a monthly fee. As a result, ISPs will enjoy the additional revenues and will motivate customers to migrate to the next service level when they see that their link becomes saturated"

Availability and pricing
The products are available now. Most of the announced features are part of a new software version of the NetEnforcer product. The NetEnforcer product line has several models which differ in performance levels.

Pricing starts at $3,200. The new reporting capabilities come with NetAccountant (an add-on s/w to the NetEnforcer) and pricing depends on the NetEnforcer model and starts at $1,500. Pricing of the NetPolicy product, providing the VBM capabilities, starts at $5,000.

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