Say a customer has a 30M Internet and during normal hours bandwidth should be allocated to local college resources. After hours, home users (adsl, cable) should be sharing the full bandwidth. The solution is to set up a cron job that would apply different configurations by time of day.

The format of cron fields are: Min hour dayofmonth month dayofweek program.

Here is an example of how to overwrite the NetEqualizer configuration with one changing at 3:00 a.m. and then again at 6:00 a.m.

• 0 3 * * * /art/do3am.sh
• 0 6 * * * /art/do6am.sh

The commands in the user created files do3am.sh and do6am.sh should be executable and contain command line commands to do the copying and then restarting of the NetEqualizer process. Those of you that want to try this out can contact support@netequalizer.com to get help with creating the multiple configurations and user commands. It is possible to do this all from the Web GUI, but you can do it from the console or SSH access more easily.

This tip is courtesy of Ed Loebach and Nathan Lloyd, network administrators at St. Mary's University of Minnesota.

They had the unusual case (NOT!) of their peer-to- peer users filling up their connection table, even with global connections in place. When the connection table filled up at peak times with 5000 entries they lost their equalizing capabilities for short periods (The NetEqualizer cannot track the usage of users unless they are in the connection table).

They decided to try reducing the parameter "INACTIVE_TICS" to 400. This had the effect of timing out connection in the active connection table in four seconds instead of the default 10. Early reports from Ed and Nathan are that this little change increased turnover in the connection table (i.e., old unused connections left the table more quickly, and hence the more active p2p connections could be tracked more efficiently without the table overflowing). There seem to be no ill side effects.

Many times we are asked to tally PENALTIES for a particular user. Here is a script to do just that:

• #!/bin/shcount=0count2=0while read adoecho $a | grep PENALTY | grep IP > /dev/nullif [ "$?" = 0 ]thencount=`expr $count + 1`echo PENALTY total for IP $1 count = $countfi
• done

Save this script off in a file named pencount in the /art directory.

To run this script, log in to the shell:

• cat /tmp/arblog | /art/pencount x.x.x.x

x.x.x.x represents the IP address for which you wish to count penalties.

Did you know you can load the standard SNMP MIB on the NetEqualizer? Here's how one site suggests you do it: http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/snmp.htm.

Suppose you wanted to block any Web site with the content "Comcast high speed Internet." Perhaps you are a wireless provider and don't want your customers shopping the competition. Here is how you do it.

From the misc->run command "/art/CONTENT_FILTER2 block_comcast comcast*internet". This will create a content filter named "block_comcast" that will block any Web page with the word Comcast followed by any number of words and characters and the word Internet. To activate, you'll see a line created in your /etc/arbdefault.conf file with a # sign commenting it out. Simply uncomment the line and do a soft reset and then try the Comcast page... blocked!

That should do it.

Do you have congestion at your access points? Yes, we are working to come up with a new retail offering of our AirEqualizer, but until then, you should know that you can actually relieve congestion at an access point from the head of your network if you own a NetEqualizer.

Here's how:

• You must know the IP addresses of all of the users sharing the access point. Use the NetEqualizer pool feature and create a pool with an up/down bandwidth threshold in accordance with your average throughput of your access point. In reality, what we have noticed is that most access points B/G seem to end up putting out about 1.5 megabits, so if in doubt, use this number.
• Once you have created a pool, add the IP addresses into the pool.

That's all you need to do. The NetEqualizer will automatically initiate congestion control when the throughput at the access point approaches 1.5 megabits. The effect of this feature will keep weaker premise nodes from getting locked out.