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SmoothTraffic

 

Bandwidth Management (QoS) Module

Prioritise - Interactive traffic for good performance (eg VoIP) Limit - Bandwidth used by file downloads, FTP etc. Fairness - Ensure fair bandwidth allocation for all users Reporting - Bandwidth utilisation reports

As few networks have sufficient Internet connection bandwidth to always be able to meet demand, bandwidth management techniques can be used to prioritise important traffic so that mission critical and interactive services run smoothly and quickly. SmoothTraffic is the Bandwidth Management module for SmoothWall firewalls, enabling organisations to get the best performance and value from their Internet connections.

Network demand is not constant throughout the day, nor from day to day; for almost any network there will be times when demand outstrips capacity. Providing enough bandwidth to always be able to meet demand is prohibitively expensive for most organisations. Analogies can be drawn with road networks, where demand outstrips capacity at peak times, requiring the use of traffic lights and other flow control measures to regulate and prioritise traffic. Strangely enough, most computer networks do not use traffic control techniques, resulting in high demand users and applications swamping capacity, with everybody else suffering slow performance, resulting in wasted time and money.

Bandwidth management solutions have historically been seen as too expensive and too complicated for use on other than the largest enterprise networks. Yet even small networks, using low cost DSL connections, benefit from using Bandwidth Management technology. Hence we created SmoothTraffic, the cost-effective, easy-to-use Bandwidth Management module for SmoothWall firewalls.

SmoothTraffic can be configured to prioritise traffic or limit bandwidth utilisation in several different ways, including:

• Limit bandwidth utilisation by IP/network address to ensure equitable provision of bandwidth amongst users.
• Prioritise traffic by protocol (port). Typically this would be used to ensure that interactive traffic such as web browsing, secure shell sessions or Voice over IP applications get the bandwidth they need to function properly. This is achieved by preventing heavy demand applications like file transfers from monopolising the bandwidth.
• Control total bandwidth utilisation so that queuing and prioritisation is performed by SmoothWall rather that by the upstream networking equipment over which users have no control. This is particularly important with DSL, which is typically optimised for file downloads rather than interactive traffic and file uploads.
• Allocate an extremely small bandwidth share of the available bandwidth to network services that have not been explicitly configured, in order that unauthorised network use will not impact upon legitimate usage. For example, if music downloads, internet radio, games etc. have not been configured, they will receive very little bandwidth and run extremely slowly. Likewise, this facility will avoid the risk of virus infected machines swamping network traffic and can limit email volume, so making the sending of SPAM email impracticable.

SmoothTraffic integrates into the existing firewall Graphical User Interface (GUI) providing a set of simple screens to configure the traffic prioritisation and bandwidth capping rules.