Network Bandwidth Control and Management
Network traffic is on the rise and is becoming more difficult to predict. Purchasing bandwidth, whether MPLS WAN or broadband, usually requires committing to contracts, most of them being long term. It’s difficult to justify any bandwidth expenditure without first making sure networks are optimized. IT professionals are proactive and can use network bandwidth analyzers to understand how well their networks are performing. That data can be used to establish a baseline to begin the optimization process and measure how well tools, procedures, and techniques are performing.
A 3 Step Approach to Implementing
Bandwidth Monitoring and Control
- Cloud bandwidth monitors
- WAN bandwidth monitors
- Internet bandwidth monitors
- Various application performance monitors
- Unauthorized or malicious traffic
- Outdated hardware and software
- Poor bandwidth planning
- Difficult to predict peek-traffic periods
- Network configuration errors
- Unresolved network bottlenecks
- Investing in optimization tools to identify and eliminate bottlenecks
- Reconfiguring, updating, or replacing network equipment and software such as
- Acquiring routers with bandwidth control
- Network bandwidth control software and/or hardware
- Internet bandwidth control software and/or hardware
- Educating users on proper network usage and traffic reduction techniques
- Providing a separate network for guests or less performance-sensitive user groups, departments, or sites
- Reviewing cybersecurity measures that may be causing latency
- Compressing more data to reduce network loads
Step 1
Use or obtain network bandwidth analyzers to measure and establish your network performance baselines. Depending on your network architecture, you may require different tools.
Measure Throughput – Record the amount of data that’s being transferred from a source to a destination at any given time. Packet loss, resend requests, latency, or jitter (data not streaming) adversely affects performance and are indicators of throughput issues. Causes may include:
Map Bandwidth — Capture the theoretical maximum throughput of a network or link. It’s measured by how much data can be sent during a given period and is measured in bits, megabits, or gigabits per second. To use a car analogy, the only way to improve bandwidth is to increase the number of lanes or obtain faster lanes. In other words, bandwidth is finite unless you purchase additional links.
Step 2
Establish traffic management controls and implement quality of service policies. IT professionals can invest in network tools to configure and monitor the quality of service levels. These ensure that important applications such as OLTP, VoIP, video conferencing, and cloud applications are given priority. The IT professional will need to determine what applications, users, or sites are less important and can tolerate slower performance.
Step 3
The final phase to optimization involves taking proactive steps such as:
If all or some of those measures don’t completely solve the performance problem, IT professionals may have no choice but to invest in addition bandwidth.
Use or obtain network bandwidth analyzers to measure and establish your network performance baselines. Depending on your network architecture, you may require different tools.
- Cloud bandwidth monitors
- WAN bandwidth monitors
- Internet bandwidth monitors
- Various application performance monitors
Measure Throughput – Record the amount of data that’s being transferred from a source to a destination at any given time. Packet loss, resend requests, latency, or jitter (data not streaming) adversely affects performance and are indicators of throughput issues. Causes may include:
- Unauthorized or malicious traffic
- Outdated hardware and software
- Poor bandwidth planning
- Difficult to predict peek-traffic periods
- Network configuration errors
- Unresolved network bottlenecks
Map Bandwidth — Capture the theoretical maximum throughput of a network or link. It’s measured by how much data can be sent during a given period and is measured in bits, megabits, or gigabits per second. To use a car analogy, the only way to improve bandwidth is to increase the number of lanes or obtain faster lanes. In other words, bandwidth is finite unless you purchase additional links.
Establish traffic management controls and implement quality of service policies. IT professionals can invest in network tools to configure and monitor the quality of service levels. These ensure that important applications such as OLTP, VoIP, video conferencing, and cloud applications are given priority. The IT professional will need to determine what applications, users, or sites are less important and can tolerate slower performance.
The final phase to optimization involves taking proactive steps such as:
- Investing in optimization tools to identify and eliminate bottlenecks
- Reconfiguring, updating, or replacing network equipment and software such as
- Acquiring routers with bandwidth control
- Network bandwidth control software and/or hardware
- Internet bandwidth control software and/or hardware
- Educating users on proper network usage and traffic reduction techniques
- Providing a separate network for guests or less performance-sensitive user groups, departments, or sites
- Reviewing cybersecurity measures that may be causing latency
- Compressing more data to reduce network loads
If all or some of those measures don’t completely solve the performance problem, IT professionals may have no choice but to invest in addition bandwidth.
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- Reduce complexity and operational overhead
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Open Systems provides one homogeneous view of the entire network, including the traffic loads and patterns for various applications. Embedded Open Systems technology analyses and identifies what type of traffic is passing through the network.
- It classifies the traffic and associates it with multiple types of applications.
- It can also be configured to identify unique customer applications that require high levels of performance and priority-routing.
- Network performance is continually monitored for various applications to ensure that QoS requirements are met.
Open Systems removes the tedious configuration and guesswork out of network management. It adds an intelligent and autonomous layer that manages network configuration to ensure QoS levels are met and costs are contained.
Contact our customer advocates to learn how to optimize performance while reducing management complexity and costs.
