Apart from great organisation, speakers, and coffee, conference delegates generally rate WiFi connectivity as one of the most important needs at a conference. So, while the word spread that the number of registered Net Prophet delegates (Net Prophet is a South African conference we sponsor) was fast approaching the 900 mark, we were meticulously plotting how we were going to provide free WiFi; whilst trying to figure out exactly how many devices would be connected on the day, and at any given time.

From last year’s conference (400 delegates), we learnt that balancing the load across eight 1mb/s connections was simply not going to cut it this time. We needed to find something that would allow 900+ delegates to freely tweet, upload, download, check emails, send emails and chat to their friends who were missing out on the conference.

Some of the challenges that face conference WiFi are:

1. Providing enough back-haul Internet capacity
2. Limiting per user download and upload speed
3. WiFi coverage within the venue
4. Wireless interference
5. Wireless Access Point congestion

Net Prophet takes the form of a one day conference held in a large conference facility. We calculated that we would need an Internet back-haul link total with the capacity of about 20Mb/s down and 10Mb/s up to give the largely tech crowd a great experience. We provisioned this directly from our Data Centre in Cape Town via 2 5.8Ghz point to point wireless links to the roof of the conference venue.

Inside the venue we set up a Linux firewall to provide DHCP along with per protocol queuing to ensure that no single user was able to abuse the service and slow speeds down for others.

Quality of service needed to be assured and our techs set up a few ‘queues’ on the router. The router would evaluate traffic and put it into the relevant queue (email, Web traffic, torrents, and ‘other’), which we monitored throughout the day, allowing us to adjust the queues accordingly should any latency be experienced. We also prioritised bandwidth to websites we knew would be accessed during the day by most users like Twitter, Facebook, Twitpic, Bitly and a few others.

To cover the venue in a WiFi blanket we used technology from Xirrus in the form of 16 access points each, with the radio turned down to 50% and with a sectorized antennae to focus the signal. Due to the constraints of the 2.4Ghz technology it is important not to overload individual access points but rather try to spread the load across as many access points as possible.

When conference delegates arrive in the morning there is usually a surge in usage, as everyone turns on their laptops, iPhones and iPads. To manage this and ensure all delegates got a reasonable connection, we rate limited each wireless connection to 2Mb/s. During the morning session, there were on average 132 devices connected and we were downloading approximately 2Mbps – 4Mbps (30% of which was for email). After the first tea break, news obviously spread about the free WiFi connectivity, so we removed the limiting. The number of devices connected immediately increased to 165. Continuous downloading on the link then jumped to between 5 Mbps – 8Mbps (90% being Web traffic) with the maximum being 14.9 Mbps, but as much as 10Mbps for extended 5 minute periods.

Towards the end of the conference, Web traffic decreased to 4Mbps, email traffic virtually disappeared, and ‘other’ traffic increased. Interestingly enough, the lowest traffic – less than 2Mbps – was recorded during Richard Mulholland’s presentation (Social Media: The side effects), just proving that we all “Stopped. Listened and took thing in.”

Of the 900+ delegates in attendance, only 1 person made an attempt at a torrent, but that was only for about 20 minutes before we stopped him (or her). Other than that, it was a very responsible crowd!

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

How we provided free WiFi at a tech conference for 900+ delegates

We are very proud to announce the launch and immediate availability of True Cloud Servers – a cloud hosting platform that allows users to deploy and provision fully operational servers in just seconds. The first of its kind in South Africa, True Cloud Servers offer benefits previously unavailable to businesses hosting locally.

There are 2 key differences between our True Cloud Servers and currently competing products: (1) The speed at which servers can be deployed and provisioned; and (2) the flexibility and scalability of any given solution. The business benefits of this product explained in further detail on our website.

With True Cloud Servers new servers can be up and running in minutes, and new server resources allocated on-demand to cater for resource hungry applications or sudden website traffic spikes. This is the next evolution in hosting…. Hardware as a Service.

The technology behind True Cloud Servers allows for flexible control of server resources through the use of Cloud Nodes. Users can maintain optimal server conditions by adding resources from Cloud Nodes whenever they lack CPU, memory or other server resources. These resources can also be controlled on a day-to-day basis, as the demands placed on the server change. Users only purchase the resources they need, and only pay for what’s provisioned.

As with traditional server offerings, True Cloud Servers give the user complete control with full administrator access to their server, allowing them to select their choice operating system, applications and configuration.

A key factor for business who may consider using cloud services is the recent increase in available bandwidth and the resulting decrease in the costs thereof. This makes True Cloud Servers a viable option for businesses that need to host locally.

With regards to potential security concerns in the Cloud, users have nothing to fear. We, as the Service Provider, do not have access to any of our customers’ servers; each server is independent of the others in the Cloud. Organisations like Google and the UK Government are already utilising similar hosting platforms with great success.

True Cloud Servers are available in 256MB (@ R256 p/m), 512MB (@ R395 p/m), 1G (@ R695 p/m), 2G (@ R995 p/m) and 4G (@ R1,495 p/m), and setup for all of these options are free. Find out more about our packages here.

Curious about this new product? Try it out risk free with our free trial offer.

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

A Cloud Hosting first for SA

WordPress is a blog publishing application which may be used for basic content management and focuses on web standards and usability. Features include, but are far from limited to: a user-friendly workflow, rich plugin architecture and an advanced templating system. WordPress is free and has become one of the most popular blog software applications used. RSAWEB provides web-hosting packages suitable for hosting WordPress sites.

Bit.ly and Goo.gl are used to shorten the length of your URL, enabling you to share the link easily, Tweet and email to it to friends, with the objectives being: stability (ensuring the services have good uptime), security (protecting users from malware and phishing pages), speed (fast resolution of short URLs) and tracking (see how many people followed your link).

Google Analytics is a valuable tool which allows you to track the traffic information associated with your blog. You can view the number of unique visitors, page views, as well as how the visitors arrived at your site. This information provides you with useful insights into your target audience, hence preparing you to write better-targeted content and strengthen your marketing initiatives.

Google Feedburner allows bloggers the ability to create and manage their own custom RSS feeds and track the usage of their subscribers and readers. It is the leading tool for media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds assisting bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers to promote, deliver and ultimately profit from their blog.

Disqus expands on your blog’s discussion community through using Discus Comment as a comment system and moderation tool for your site, also allowing users to comment via their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

TubeMogul, if you decide to include video into your blog, then TubeMogul is the tool for you. TubeMogul presents the blogger with a single point for deploying uploads to multiple video sharing and media sites. Additionally, the analytic technology aggregates your video-viewing data to give users the information as to who, when, where and how often their videos are being watched.

HubSpot gets you found online with advanced inbound marketing tools and shows you how to convert more visitors into leads. The full package will burn a hole in your pocket, with the cost of packages ranging from US$250 to US$12,000 p/month. However, the 7-day free trial should give you a fair understanding into the products capabilities. There are also HubSpot free tools available at Website Grader, and Twitter Grader which will analyze your Twitter account, followers and Twitter habits.

These suggested tools are merely the entrance gate to a whole world of apps that will assist any blogger with getting the most out of their blog. There’s an app that will suit a bloggers every need, it’s just a question of: Which one is your favourite?

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

Essential Tools for Bloggers

With the new-year in full swing, lets take a look at what strategic technologies we think are already beginning to take root, and will play a big role in shaping IT in South Africa during 2010:

1. Cloud based Technologies
With the success and rapid adoption of cloud based technologies in international markets, it’s only a matter of time before this game-changer reaches our shores, offering services that are faster to market than ever before. Expect some big developments in this space from RSAWEB in the near future.

2. Modular Data Center design
A more modular approach to data centre design will be employed, only providing resources for space being utilized. Previously, newly-built data centers often had huge areas of vacant floor space, fully powered and backed by an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), water-and air-cooled while they were predominantly empty.

3. Flash Memory
Flash memory is not a new technology, but it is only now beginning to gain momentum as the price drops with increasing demand.

According to international research company Gartner, at the current rate of price drops, this technology will enjoy more than a 100 percent compound annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas including consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems.

4. Virtualization for Availability
Recent developments in virtualization technology such as live migration, has brought a new focus on this technology, which now provides higher availability than before. Such developments will allow for the cost and complexity systems to be reduced.

5. Mobile Applications
An often overlooked factor in a country that has 3 times more mobile internet users than broadband users. By the end of 2010, Gartner predicts that world wide 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a prosperous environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web.

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

Technologies that will shape 2010

It’s astounding, time is fleeting

But listen closely, not for very much longer

I’ve got to keep control

The blackness would hit me and the void would be calling

Let’s do the time warp again!

For more news and interesting insight cloud devices like the Amazon Kindle follow us on twitter

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

Amazon Kindle Unboxing

For the months of April & May, we’ll be giving away one of these stunning limited edition Geek t-shirts every week. To enter, all you need to do is add @RSAWEB to your ‘following’ list (not to be confused with ‘followers’) on your twitter account. Each week we’ll select a new follower to be the recipient of one of these fashion gems.

Following RSAWEB on twitter, you’ll get real time news and updates and access to industry insights from our experts. Plus, you’ll be able to join in the conversation, engaging with us and our twitter following.

Our twitter address is http://www.twitter.com/rsaweb

T’s available in #000000 only.

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

Geek Gear Competition

If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you’re not sure, that ads are risky, that you can’t tell. …

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that’s positive, buy, buy, buy.

And if you don’t know those things, why are you buying digital ads?

We do a lot of online advertising through various providers and it is amazing how scientific you can get in order to gain real value from the medium. Online ads have totally changed the marketing landscape and we no longer rely on made up stats like “readership” and “circulation” that off line print media rely on the help justify their advertising costs.  I’m not saying don’t use “off line” media, as not all of your target audience are necessarily online, but it sure does help to focus your marketing efforts with stats such as cost per click and revenue per click.

The one thing about online advertising is that you need to actively track them.  Gone are the days of sending off an advert to your favorite magazine and then waiting for the phone to ring. Today, you can see exactly how your online ads are performing, who is viewing them and if they are delivering real business results. All in real time. Its amazing how the Internet is revolutionising marketing and the way we reach customers.

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

Does online advertising work for your business

My answer usually hinges around explaining to them how people’s communication choice’s are changing in a similar way to how we changed our method of communicating when we bought our first cell phone. We no longer needed to wait at home for that important phone call, we could just pick up our cell phone at any location and call/text our friends. Twitter and Facebook are the next step in this communication evolution as the Internet allows us through these platforms to communicate for free on a one to many basis, rather than a one to one method like your cell phone. So you can now tell all our friends about the new bike you have just bought or about where we are having dinner tonight. Your friends who are now following you on Twitter have the choice of whether to act on this information or to ignore it.

After dabbling a bit with Twitter I initially wrote it off as a niche teenager communication tool that while sometimes useful would not be something I would ever use, however I am finding more and more business uses for it as I interact with others through it and explore its uses.

So, what is Twitter? According to Wikipedia…

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

For a business Twitter offers new ways of engaging existing and new clients in a way that was never possible before. Take a look at this short screencast video that explains how to use Twitter in your business. Enjoy!

Screencast courtesy of www.smallbiztrends.com

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

What is Twitter?

I have no doubt that in South Africa, the average cellphone user has been SMS’ing more than calling for some time due to our higher call tariffs.

So what does this mean, how can you capitalize on this?

Here are 2 examples:

1. Use SMS communications from your website, rather than email/call/fax, try send pertinent information via SMS.  An example of this may be a “contact me form” where when a user inputs his details for you to call him back, you could SMS the user immediately thanking them for their request and alerting the user that it may take up to 30 minutes before you call them back. In time sensitive business applications such as selling insurance online, managing this expectation could be the difference between providing what you consider a good service, and the users expectation for an immediate response.
2. Allow people to SMS your business, try setting up a inbound SMS system. For example this same insurance company could publish a number and say on their website: “SMS 08xxxxxxxx with your car make, model and year and we will get you a quote in 30 minutes”

The bottom line is marketing is now all about using communication methods that users are already comfortable using, so if you are already using the web and email and are finding you are not growing your business or delighting your customers more, try SMS.

Checkout MyMessager, should you need the technology and API’s to do this.

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

Do you SMS more than you phone

Thinking of a new dedicated server? Have you thought about virtualisation? Virtualisation is allowing companies to maximise server, storage and power resources. Instead of running each different application on a different set of server hardware, why not run mulitple operating systems on one machine.

RSAWeb is helping customers to maximise dedicated servers. Instead of purchasing 2-3 servers for a production / development setup, why not virtualise and use one server to do the job of many. The latest Dell XHD server from RSAWeb is extremely powerful, with 8 CPU cores and up to 32GB RAM. This can support multiple virtual machines. For example, a server with 8GB RAM allows you to run a production frontend server on 2 cores and 2GB RAM, another database server with 4GB RAM and the balance can be split amongst smaller development servers. All on 1 set of hardware!

At the same time, you will need to make sure you arent overutilising your resources, however Virtualisation has a great benefit that should you need to scale this out at a future date as your requirements grow, you can easily migrate one of the virtual servers to another physical server also running Citrix Xen (RSAWeb’s virutalisation standard) – this allows for easy flexibily, all without any reinstalling or changing of settings on the server, amazing!

Use your server in a flexible manner and cut your costs whilst also going GREEN! Using the latest AMD and Intel processors and DDR2 RAM you use less power, less cooling and benefit the environment at the same time.

Have you seen our new Data Centre? Take the tour

Getting the most out of virtualisation & dedicated servers