Traffic Management recommendations [closed]

Question

What's your strategy towards traffic prioritization/management.

I am not really to just get a list of packet shaping solutions. Instead, I would like to get recommendations about traffic management strategies that include:

• What software/hardware products you use, or have used
• How this solution is/was implemented
• Why would you recommend (or not) this solution/strategy

Here are some solutions I've heard of, but haven't had much (if at all) experience with them:

• Linux Advanced Routing Traffic Contro (http://lartc.org/)
• Packeteer (http://www.bluecoat.com/products/packetshaper/specifications)
• NetEqualizer (http://www.netequalizer.com/nda.htm)
• Network Composer (http://www.cymphonix.com/Products.html)
• NetEnforcer (http://www.allot.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=88888966)

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Some notes:

• I'm debating myself whether or not to include pricing information
• This is assuming you have the NEED for traffic management

Answer 1

I like using squid with the delay pools option as a really simple starting point. The weakness of this solution is that it will only help with types of traffic that can be forced through the proxy.

To set it up you just put squid on your edge device configure as needed. The configure the clients for protocols that cannot be transparently intercepted.

Answer 2

There's a wonderful HowTo for Linux on advanced routing and traffic control. It includes a very nice section on bandwidth management by classifying traffic.

Answer 3

Netequalizer has put together a page that lists what users have been saying on independent blogs, forums and listservs. So, it's a good way to get some feedback from people who are actually using it -- http://netequalizernews.com/about-the-netequalizer/what-netequalizer-users-are-saying/

Answer 4

I have done quite a bit of work with Packeteer devices. They are the defacto corporate standard product for managing bandwidth I think.

They are hardware devices that sit inline, you can then limit traffic by machine or by application. You can setup both priorities and hard limits.

So for example, you can setup your WAN link to put email as a low priority, using say 256k only. You could setup RDP traffic to be top priority and have as much nadwidth as you think it would need. In fact you can set a limit for a protocol over all and per connection in that protocol.

Packetter devices are pretty simple to get right, but there is a lot of advanced features to play with. I'd recommend them. Of course they are not cheap... sorry.