Bandwidth management Bandwidth management is the process of measuring and controlling the communications (traffic, packets) on a network link,

to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link, which would result in network congestion and poor performance of the network.

What is Bandwidth Management? Bandwidth management is a general term given to a collection of tools and techniques that an organization can use to reduce demand on critical segments of networks. Often bandwidth management may be applied on the WAN / LAN segment that connects the organization to the greater Internet.

What Are the Issues to be addressed?

Techniques brought to bear on bandwidth management include these:

Data compression, to reduce the size of the data that must be transmitted. Local caching, to store frequently used data locally instead of transmitting it multiple times. Bandwidth prioritization, to allocate bandwidth based on the importance of the application. Distributed content, to move content from a single location to multiple locations nearer the end users. Blocking unauthorized traffic. Internet accounting packages, to track bandwidth usage and charge it back to customers (commonly used at Australian universities). User education, to educate users about the consequences of their actions and convince them to be good citizens on the network.

Bandwidth management vendors currently operating in the marketplace include: Peribit Networks SR-50 Sequence Reducer compresses data by eliminating repetitions using Molecular Sequence Reduction (MSR) technology Expand Networks ACCELERATORs combine data compression, caching, and prioritization techniques in combination Allot Communications NetEnforcer uses bandwidth prioritization, and their CacheEnforcer uses caching Packeteers PacketShaper uses bandwidth prioritization schemes to monitor, block, and throttle traffic Intelligent Compression Technologies AcceleNet and Xpress Suite use data compression Akamais EdgeSuite distributes content to a global network of servers Akonix Systems L7 Solution detects and blocks rogue protocols at the networks edge Palisade Systems PacketHound uses bandwidth prioritization schemes to monitor, block, and throttle traffic Inktomis Traffic Edge combines caching and filtering strategies Digiquants Internet Management System does Internet accounting and billing to end users

 Hansen Technologies Hub does Internet accounting and billing to end users

Management Bandwidth management mechanisms may be used to further engineer performance and includes: Traffic shaping (rate limiting): TCP rate control - artificially adjusting TCP window size as well as controlling the rate of ACKs being returned to the sender

Scheduling algorithms: Weighted fair queuing (WFQ) Class based weighted fair queuing Weighted round robin (WRR) Deficit weighted round robin (DWRR) Hierarchical Fair Service Curve (HFSC) Congestion avoidance: RED, WRED - Lessens the possibility of port queue buffer tail-drops and this lowers the likelihood of TCP global synchronization Policing (marking/dropping the packet in excess of the committed traffic rate and burst size) Explicit congestion notification Buffer tuning Bandwidth reservation protocols / algorithms Resource reservation protocol (RSVP) Constraint-based Routing Label Distribution Protocol (CR-LDP) Top-nodes algorithm

Link performance Issues which may limit the performance of a given link include: TCP determines the capacity of a connection by flooding it until packets start being dropped (Slow-start) Queueing in routers results in higher latency and jitter as the network approaches (and occasionally exceeds) capacity

TCP global synchronization when the network reaches capacity results in waste of bandwidth Burstiness of web traffic requires spare bandwidth to rapidly accommodate the bursty traffic Lack of widespread support for explicit congestion notification and Quality of Service management on the Internet Internet Service Providers typically retain control over queue management and quality of service at their end of the link Window Shaping allows higher end products to reduce traffic flows, which reduce queue depth and allow more users to share more bandwidth fairly

Tools and techniques Packet sniffer Network traffic measurement