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| Bandwidth
Management and QoS on the WAN – Our Implementation
Experience |
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"About
4000 Mbps of WAN bandwidth being managed by solutions
provided by us today" |
| From |
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| To |
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At VFM we have been working on Application
level QoS solutions with our customers since early
2000.
We have worked with our customers, studied their
specific issues in detail with them and have been
able to customize a solution for the Bandwidth Management
they desired. |
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We understand various traffic types,
how they behave while being transported across the
network, the nuances of treating different types
of traffic differently, and the various methods
by which we can work towards achieving the desired
allocation of precious WAN bandwidth to various
contending applications.
The clear benefits demonstrated by our approach
and understanding have resulted in about 200 M of
WAN bandwidth being managed by us at various client
locations today.
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We
follow a four step management process towards managing
bandwidth :
Classify
– "You can Manage what you can
see – and higher the quality of visibility,
better is the ability to manage " is the basis
here. We can automatically identify over 270 different
types of traffic through the powerful identification
capability of Packeteer technology. In addition,
classification is on the basis of any criteria from
Layer 2 to Layer 7 or a combination of these. We
could identify and classify Oracle traffic from
a specific Project Group, or all traffic going into
a set of servers – we work on customizing
the traffic tree to the specific needs and nuances
of the customer's network.
Analyze–
Having setup the traffic tree, the next step
is to measure the data, analyze the data. How is
bandwidth being consumed? Which applications are
consuming most bandwidth? What are the response
times of various applications? Is a response time
issue linked to starvation of bandwidth to certain
applications– by the more aggressive traffic
types? Am I using the bandwidth for what I had planned
it for? The answers to these and more such questions
are found in this phase. |
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Control –
A set of utilisation, response time behavior baselines
are drawn and rules are applied to the traffic accordingly.
A powerful set of control rules help in doing this.
We can set per application minimum/maximum, per
user / user group minimum / maximum bandwidth, allocate
priorities, not allow certain types of traffic and
Invoke TCP Rate Control as a means of proactively
managing TCP
transmissions.
Report
– A comprehensive set of reports –
to provide complete and clear information on the
results of the rules/policies applied. This feedback
is an indicator of the efficacy of the applied policies
and if required the same steps are iterated through
for finer management. |
| Specific Applications of QoS deployed
for our customers |
- Ensure quality of Voice in VOIP
Implementations
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- Comprehensive profiling and monitoring
of bandwidth usage at the application level,
department level etc
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- Contain certain bursty types of traffic
so that they do not monopolize the entire bandwidth
leading to periods of bandwidth starvation'
for other types of traffic and consequent response
time issues.
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- Reserve bandwidth for certain types of traffic
like Telnet, TN5250, TN3270, Citrix
etc. so that these users get the response times
required off interactive applications.
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- Accelerate certain specific
ftps, to higher levels of transmission.
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- Acelerate HTTP to Intranet sites,
other sites important to the business and squeeze
the rest of http traffic – during business
hours.
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- Apply admission control to
certain types of traffic like Real Audio, RealVideo,
Chat etc.
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- Provide higher priority to
certain important users, user groups etc.
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- Allocate bandwidth between
various departments or Project Groups etc.
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- Through the patented TCP Rate Control technology
of Packetshaper, reduce retransmissions in the
network, reduce router queues and in effect
increase the efficiency of the network and ROI
on the link.
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- Take advantage of Compression
– and get more from your existing bandwidth
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