The winner of our 10-megabits-per-second-and-higher tests, Lightspeed Systems QoS Control for e-Business 1100, is an Intel-based traffic management appliance in a 1U form factor. It sports two 10/100 megabit Ethernet ports and a standard console connection in the front of the appliance - a plus for easy access and setup. QosWorks 10000, on the other hand, offers its Ethernet and console ports at the back of the unit. The QoS Control for e-Business appliance runs Microsoft Windows NT and is managed remotely, with limited configuration options available in the CLI via a console connection. You can, if you desire, console into the Lightspeed and drop to an NT command prompt, though there is very little that can be accomplished in this manner from a traffic management perspective.

The setup of the QoS Control for e-Business appliance required us to spend some time learning the interface of the IP Magic Manager -- a drag-and-drop, graphical-based configuration and management application. Unlike the QoSWorks 10000's management interface, this application was not initially intuitive. The documentation provided for QoS Control for e-Business was less than helpful and needs a lot of improvement.

QoS Control for e-Business offers class-based queuing, as well as priority-based traffic management. We configured the system for CBQ and ran our tests at both T3 and E1 speeds. We were pleased to see that the results of our tests run at T3 speeds showed that the average jitter rate for real audio traffic dropped from our baseline of 7.5 milliseconds (see "How We Tested") to .006 milliseconds and that interactive TCP traffic showed a decrease in response times across the board. The results at E1 speeds were just as impressive.

Viewing the real-time statistics during the run proved to be informative and would be useful in determining the best traffic management strategies for your network. Being able to classify and measure traffic before building policies to manage it is an integral part of deploying a traffic management tool. Both Lightspeed and Sitara provide excellent facilities in which to perform these pre-deployment tasks. The AD4 also provides real time counters, but they lacked the detail of the QoS Control for e-Business.

QoS Control for e-Business can manage bandwidth from 64 kilobits per second up to 45 megabits per second and does it well. A myriad of features are available, from server load balancing to time-based policy management to firewall functionality - all integrated into a single solution.

QoS Control for e-Business 2.60, Lightspeed Systems, contact the vendor for pricing, (888) 74-IPMAGIC, (661) 324-4291; fax (661) 324-1437. www.lightspeedsystems.com