Setting priorities

The software, installed in August for less than US$10,000, prioritizes WAN traffic based on Perini's list of the most critical traffic streams, Holden said. E-mail and voice over IP (VOIP) between Framingham and other Perini offices around the world were judged to be the highest priority. FTP traffic was given a medium to low priority, and the lowest priority was given to user access to Internet radio sites, she said.

"We discovered people were listening to radio online more than I thought, and that was taking most of the traffic," Holden said.

Once Internet radio traffic was relegated to the lowest priority, its performance dropped, as did the number of people listening to it.

"I didn't have to slap anybody's hands and say, 'No, you can't listen to Internet radio,'" Holden said. In fact, users simply stopped using Internet radio when performance lagged.