Monthly Archives: August 2009

Online Video Viewing is Up

According to Nielsen’s “VideoCensus,” online video viewing is up this year compared to last.  Total video streaming was up 31.4%, and viewers spent an average of about 3.5 hours watching online video in July.  This is an increase of 42.2% from 2008.  The most popular video Web site was YouTube with over 7 billion streams in July 2009. A simple 5 minute video on YouTube uses 12,500 kilobytes in bandwidth.

Online video viewing often happens in the workplace where users have access to a faster Internet connection.  This can cause network slowdowns or latency in the workplace if abused.

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

  • 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.

Source: https://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007247

Categorization Update for YouTube

YouTube(www.youtube.com) has been moved to the Streaming Media category. It was previously categorized as Social Networking. This change will take effect in today’s URL list download in your Cyfin or CyBlock product.

You can change how sites are categorized by going to the Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Edit URLs screen.  Simply use the pulldown to select a category that you wish to assign a site (or sites) to.  Then enter it in the text box, and click Submit.  From then on, the site will be categorized as being in the category you just assigned it to.  You can confirm this by going to the Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Check URL screen and typing in the same site you just re-categorized.

In addition to this ability, you have Custom Categories, which are empty and available for you to use.  These categories can be populated with sites of your choosing, and you can even rename the custom categories on the Advanced Settings – Category Setup – Name Custom screen.  With these tools at your disposal, you can customize the product to truly suit your unique environment.