Bandwidth Management in the Corporate Sector

Bandwidth is a term closely related to data and speed. Each computer has an allocated amount of bandwidth which determines the amount of data to be downloaded per second or transferred to the computer from the internet. More bandwidth relates to more speed as more data can be downloaded per second. A bandwidth limit means either a speed limit or a data limit. Traffic shaping is basically the control of computer network traffic to ensure the optimization of performance, lower latency and to increase usable bandwidth by delaying certain packets that meet particular criteria. Action on a set of packets, known as stream or flow, which can impose additional amount of delay on those packets that conform to a pre decided constraint which maybe a contract or traffic profile, is also defined as traffic shaping.

This can filter the volume of traffic sent into a network in a certain time. This is known as bandwidth throttling. The maximum speed at which the traffic is sent is known as rate limiting. Even though this kind of filtering is achieved by many ways and reasons, traffic shaping is almost always achieved by delaying packets. Application of this traffic shaping is seen mostly at the edges of the network so it can control the traffic being sent into the network. This may also be applied by a computer or network card which is a traffic source. This is to ensure that the traffic sent by traffic sources complies with a contract which is usually presented in the network by a policer.

The distinct practice of packet dropping and pocket marking is known as traffic policing. Features of some traffic shapers include speed limiting for bandwidth-intensive applications and protocols, flexible address and port filtering, acknowledgement prioritization to speed up congested links and real-time traffic monitoring and stream statistics. In the corporate market, traffic shaping is becoming more and more common. This allows companies to cut down on their purchase of additional bandwidth.. Bandwidth management is to control the rate of download and upload for all the computers in a network. In internet cafes computers with bandwidth software are quite suitable because of the tight integration with the internet café software which can block traffic automatically when a user logs out.

Bandwidth management can provide a cost effective solution for the high internet costs some companies offer. This software is able to monitor the network traffic and in most cases the bandwidth limit can be set by the users as well. Bandwidth limiter software measures, analyzes and records the bandwidth and speed of an internet connection. This software is available in the market by a number of companies, and works with DSL, cable, modem, router, network card and any other internet enabled service. An immediate increase in the efficiency of the network is witnessed. Also, a reduction in bandwidth requirements is seen while the other internet applications can run at maximum speed. This software is often referred to as bandwidth limiter.