Vendors Provide Tools To Divvy Up BandwidthVendors Provide Tools To Divvy Up Bandwidth

Bandwidth has always been a precious commodity, but more than ever companies want to be certain they're using their networks as efficiently as possible. Vendors now offer products and services that monitor how bandwidth is used so customers can take maximum advantage of network capacity.

The products, which can be software, hardware, or even turnkey services, monitor bandwidth use or performance either within a corporate network or on a company's Internet circuits. The products use the data to configure a company's network for optimal performance.

RouteScience Technologies Inc. in October introduced its PathControl 1.0 device, which reports on bandwidth performance. It lets customers fine-tune bandwidth consumption, eliminate underperforming providers, and route traffic to the lowest-cost provider. In December, RouteScience introduced a scaled-down version that can handle four Internet service providers.

For online broker EdgeTrade.com Inc., the speed of its Internet connections is paramount because it determines how fast the company can execute customers' trades. "In this industry, milliseconds matter," CFO Norman Schwartz says.

The broker uses NetVmg Inc. software, which automatically detects performance levels of the ISPs that EdgeTrade uses and automatically routes traffic to the fastest ISP.

NetVmg's Flow Control Platform software improves network performance by picking the fastest route but also reduces a company's expenditures on Internet bandwidth because the software can be programmed to factor information on least-cost routing into its routing decisions, says Ed English, VP of corporate development at NetVmg, which introduced the software late last year.

Companies can obtain similar results by using a service. Sockeye Networks Inc.'s GlobalRoute intelligent routing service combines Internet performance data Sockeye gets through a partnership with E-business infrastructure and services outsourcer Akamai Technologies Inc. with data it collects across the Internet and from its customers' networks. The performance data is passed to a customer's routers, which alter their routing instructions to take advantage of the best-performing paths, says Brendan Hannigan, VP of strategy and business development at Sockeye.

Monitoring network traffic also can rein in uncontrolled bandwidth growth. "Clearly, we've saved quite a bit of money by mitigating the growth of the broadband network," says Bobby Lie, a senior VP at Fidelity Investments Systems Co. in Boston. The company uses NetCountant software from Apogee Networks Inc., which tracks consumption of network capacity back to an application, an individual, or a department.

Fidelity uses the Apogee software to measure bandwidth used by 35,000 people representing 7,000 cost centers, spread across numerous locations, Lie says. Once Fidelity installed the Apogee software, the company's application developers paid closer attention to the bandwidth the apps consume. Says Lie, "Before it was $9.99 all you can eat, and now there's a bit more attention paid by developers to the network behavior characteristics of the applications."