Products - ipoque - PRX Traffic Manager

Bandwidth intensive applications such as peer-to-peerbased file sharing (P2P) use up a disproportionately high amount of network resources. This drives up communication and infrastructure costs and adversely affects the quality of important business applications such as ERP and CRM systems as well as next generation applications like Internet telephony or video on demand.
P2P networks are used on a massive scale to distribute copyright-protected content, which can cause legal consequences for network operators. Many file sharers are also using one-click file hosting services that provide direct download links to the shared content (DDL). Specifically ISP and educational networks often encounter a small percentage of heavy users consuming a large proportion of the available bandwidth.
Uncontrolled and unmanaged availability of P2P, Internet telephony (VoIP, Skype), instant messaging (IM) and video streaming applications are known to pose serious security threats and decrease staff productivity due to their often non-work-related nature.
Traditional Internet gateway products such as firewalls often fail to recognize these applications as they frequently use stealth techniques like protocol obfuscation and encryption to evade detection. In many instances such systems are overwhelmed by the large number of parallel connections that are opened by these applications.

PRX Traffic Manager uses ipoque's layer-7 deep packet inspection and behavioral analysis technology to detect even the most elusive protocols, no matter if they use advanced obfuscation, port hopping, encryption or other techniques to hide from detection. PRX Traffic Manager provides comprehensive and detailed insight into the networks's per-application and per-user traffic. This information can be used to define

bandwidth management

rules to prioritize, shape, block and log individual applications´ traffic either in total or for individual users or user groups. Operators can offer tiered network service and pricing models along with flexible and fair

bandwidth allocation

. Premium applications can be prioritized and bandwidth-intensive P2P or streaming applications can be limited. PRX Traffic Manager provides a unique white listing feature for BitTorrent trackers to allow providers to offer legal P2P services with no copyright infringements.

With support for over one hundred protocols covering hundreds of applications, PRX Traffic Manager is able to detect and manage the large majority of the overall network traffic. This includes all standard protocols used for Web, e-mail and file transfer as well as all important protocols used for P2P file sharing (e.g. BitTorrent, eDonkey, Gnutella), Internet telephony based on Voice over IP (VoIP) are supported, including (e.g. SIP, Skype and, H.323), media streaming (e.g. Flash, RTP, RealMedia), instant messaging (e.g. IRC, MSN, Yahoo), tunneling (e.g. SSL, OpenVPN, Tor) and online gaming (e.g. Half-Life, World of Warcraft, Xbox). The availability of phone service can be

selectively controlled per protocol

, user and VoIP provider. The integrated

QoS functionality

of PRX Traffic Manager can enforce priority and guaranteed bandwidth for all applications using these real-time application protocols. Detailed call logging functions can be activated to analyze the service usage.

ipoque's application classification engine is able to identify the protocol of network traffic based on a combination of deep packet inspection (DPI) and behavioral analysis - not matter if they are plain text or using advanced encryption obfuscation techniques.

Regular firmware updates ensure the continuing effectiveness of the protocol signatures. Every customer with a valid support contract gets an account on ipoque's support portal. Upon availability of a new firmware, ipoque or the sales partner send e-mail notifications to all customer who can then download and install the update.

For the complete list of all supported protocols including most important applications please click HERE.

PRX Traffic Manager has been optimized to meet the performance requirements of the most demanding network environments. Performance scales up to fully loaded Gigabit links. Its internal design avoids packet queuing yielding latencies below 0.1 millisecond on normally loaded and below 1 millisecond on fully loaded links.
PRX-1G and PRX-5G support three network links per system and can handle asymmetric network traffic on these links.

The management console provides graphical usage statistics per link, user group, application and application class for configurable time intervals. A number of predefined reports help to regain control over the network, detailing the network usage from different perspectives. All statistical data can be automatically exported at different aggregation levels (i.e. per link, per user, per user group) for subsequent processing in external accounting systems. Optional application-level connection logging, either internal or to an external syslog server, provides fine-granular service usage information.

PRX Traffic Manager operates as a transparent bridge for a seamless integration into existing network environments. The Web-based management console allows simple configuration.

The management console provides graphical usage statistics per link, subscriber group, application and application class for configurable time intervals ranging from one hour to one year. A number of predefined reports help to regain control over the network, detailing the network usage from different perspectives.
All statistical data can be automatically exported at different aggregation levels (i.e., per link, per subscriber, per user group) for subsequent processing in external accounting systems. Optional application-level connection logging to an external syslog server provides fine-granular service usage information.

Flexible support options include regular signature updates, e-mail, phone and remote installation support. 24x7 support with 4 hours reaction time is available. ipoque offers customization services to meet specific requirements not available in off-the-shelf products.