Greetings,

With the popularity of online video, mp3 downloads, and social networking on a steep rise, bandwidth consumption continues to be a major concern with all of our customers. That is why in this issue we address how you can use your CyBlock or Cyfin application to control the use of inappropriate, bandwidth-intensive sites.

We also wanted to remind you that our customer service representatives and technical support personnel are available if you ever have any questions or need help with your CyBlock or Cyfin application. Our office hours are Monday - Friday, 8am - 6pm EDT, but if you ever contact us after hours, just leave a message, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Below is the contact information for technical support and customer service should you ever need to reach them.

Technical Support
Phone	321-953-5351, ext. 4
Toll-free	877-442-9346 (U.S. and Canada), ext. 4
Email	support@wavecrest.net
Customer Service
Phone	321-953-5351, ext. 3
Toll-free	877-442-9346 (U.S. and Canada), ext. 3
Email	salesSupport@wavecrest.net

Also, don't forget that you can find information on the latest releases, product tips, news and more on the Wavecrest Computing blog at http://blog.wavecrestcomputing.com. Or, you can connect with other Wavecrest customers on our Online Support Forum at http://forum.wavecrest.net.

Best Regards,

The Wavecrest Team

Controlling Bandwidth Use

Bandwidth consumption is becoming an increasing concern for all organizations as bandwidth-intensive sites and video streaming become more popular. The table below offers several examples of the amount of bandwidth that different online activities consume.

Activity or File	Size (in kb)
One hour of IM chatting with AOL	10
Send a one-page text email with Gmail	150
View five different articles in Wikipedia	1,200
Upload a 10MP JPEG photo in Flickr	2,400
Downloading a 3 minute song from iTunes	5,600
Watch a 5 minute YouTube video	12,500
Watch episode of "The Simpsons"	25,000
Listen to one hour of music on Pandora	56,300
Compressed version of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"	800,000

As the table shows, many online activities that are probably not work related utilize a lot of bandwidth. The last thing any organization needs is network latency or slowdowns due to non-work related online activity.

To mitigate this problem, CyBlock and Cyfin provide IT with the information needed to determine 1) if the bandwidth consumption is work related and 2) if any measures need to be taken to reduce the amount of consumption. Both products provide quantified data (via Web-use reports) that can help IT personnel keep track of network (bandwidth) utilization by users as well as by type of usage (appropriate or not so appropriate).

The reports below can all be used to track bandwidth usage by users and identify potentially troublesome sites.

Site Analysis Bandwidth Report - Focusing on kilobytes by classification, category, and users, this report gives a good overview of whether the majority of bandwidth consumption was acceptable and which categories and users used the most bandwidth.
Top Bandwidth Sites Report - This report shows the top bandwidth consuming sites and their categories for the specified time period.
Network Information Report - Find out your busiest time of day for Internet use with this report. It shows visits and kilobytes read by hour.
Top Users Report - This report displays the top hits, visits, and kilobytes by user.

These reports can help you anticipate overload possibilities and the need (or lack of need) to purchase additional capacity. If abuse can be detected and brought under control, the cost of additional capacity may be avoided.

By monitoring and using the reports listed above, you can:

Obtain an accurate, content-categorized picture of network usage patterns
Identify bandwidth abusers for management attention
Prevent bandwidth wastage through intelligent filtering
Improve IT system performance and reduce bandwidth costs.

Tech Tip: Filtering IM Access

While CyBlock Proxy and CyBlock ISA cannot directly block IM traffic, they can be configured to attempt to block the login pages of known IM software. This may enable you stop your clients from connecting to the IM servers. Below is a list of such sites and their server names.

AOL Instant Messenger: login.oscar.aol.com:443 login.oscar.aol.com, possibly toc.oscar.aol.com
MSN Messenger: login.live.com (this will also block access to any hotmail account)
ICQ: login.icq.com and http.proxy.icq.com
Yahoo! Messenger: shttp.msg.yahoo.com

To stop the unwanted IM activity, you can add these sites to a custom category (via Advanced Settings -- Category Setup -- Edit URL) and set up a Block URL access policy for that category. By taking these steps, you should be able to prevent users from accessing the login servers. (This assumes that the IM clients are being proxied through the CyBlock application).

If the server names change, or if you would like to verify this information, simply start the Real Time Monitor (via Reports -- Real Time Monitor) and make sure the IM clients are being proxied. You will be able to see the URLs that are required to login to these servers on the Real Time Monitor report. Simply add these URLs to the blocked custom category.

Improve Categorization with Otherwise

If you haven't taken advantage of our OtherWise program, now's a great time to start! What is OtherWise? It's an easy way for Cyfin and CyBlock customers to reduce the percentage of non-categorized (also known as "Other") Web sites in their reports.

To participate in OtherWise, simply run a “Top Non-Categorized Sites” report and email it to sites@wavecrest.net. Our list technicians will categorize the top sites on your report and add them to your list. There is no cost, and your report data is kept completely confidential.

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