EdgeXOS Dynamic Bandwidth Management

EdgeXOS Dynamic Bandwidth Management

Dynamic Bandwidth Management Setup / Overview The EdgeXOS appliance has the unique ability to perform multiple dynamic bandwidth management functions (DBM). DBM is essentially the ability to make changes to how various session flows are handled in a real-time basis. What this means is that the EdgeXOS appliance monitors the application traffic coming from network devices (end-users, servers, etc) and can throttle and/or shape that traffic automatically without the network administrator having to create specific policies for each user. This process dramatically simplifies network management and reduces and/or eliminates the network slowness issues that many organizations have throughput the day. DBM is the next generation in traffic shaping, it is different from traditional network shaping devices, as instead of attempting to shape traffic by identifying every single type of application available to an end-user, DBM simply cares about shaping the session flows, thus the application type does not matter. What this means is that regardless of how various P2P software is changed or modified, it will never be able to prevent the DBM solution from throttling and/or blocking it from functioning as designed. While the EdgeXOS appliance does fully support policy-based shaping, it is typically only required for unique circumstances where a specific server or group of users needs to have specific bandwidth limitations, and/or QoS policies placed upon it. See the Platform Notes on Policy-Based Shaping for more details on that feature. Dynamic Bandwidth Management Methods: There are two primary methods to employ DBM. The first is through Session Throttling where network administrators can essentially place a cap on overall user sessions to prevent over utilization by any specific user. The second is Adaptive Shaping which is where network administrators can set general policies for preventing bandwidth hogs and the EdgeXOS system does the rest, i.e. you set it and forget it. DBM can be enabled under the AppShaping > Dynamic Bandwidth Management menu option: Session Throttling: This function enables network administrator to set specific levels in which to cap utilization. Users can access whatever applications and use as much bandwidth as they want, so long as it is below these levels. The available settings include sessions per minute and packets per second. The default values are provided. These parameters caps can be set for different periods of the day, simply click to enable each hour that the cap should be enabled. This allows network administrators to set different shaping policies based on day or night utilization, etc.

The administrator also has the ability to disable the packet shaping limits and only shape based on the number of sessions per minute. This is controlled via the radio button below. To configure the session throttling function, simply enter the IP addresses that will be capped in this manner, make sure that all of the addresses are valid, i.e. do not use.0 or. 255 in the last octet. The default values for session throttling and pps have been provided, however these may need to be changed in certain circumstances in order to best meet the needs of your specific users.

Adaptive Shaping: This function allows administrators to automatically shape top network users in order to prevent bandwidth hogs. When enabled adaptive shaping will monitor session flows in real-time and apply shaping policies against those users which are taking up too much bandwidth based on parameters which were pre-defined by the network administrator. To configure adaptive shaping, simply first determine whether this function will be enabled at all times, or only when overall network usage is beyond a specific level. This usage level is defined can be set between 10% and 90%. The utilization level is determined based on the combined WAN rate and the configured Usage Rate defined under the LAN interface. The following is a definition of each of the available parameters: Number of Top Users To Be Shaped This is the max number of users which will be actively shaped at any given time by the adaptive shaping feature. As users begin to use less bandwidth or are throttled to the degree that they are no longer in the top users group, then they will be dropped from this group and new top users will be added. Penalty Time This is the amount of time a user is in the penalty box during each shaping interval. The shaping interval is twice the penalty time, thus the user will always be in the penalty box for half of the shaping interval. The higher this number is set, the longer a user will be in the penalty box for a specific stage, however this also determines how quick a user is staged, i.e. how long it takes a shaped user to move from one stage to the next. This calculation is effected by the capture time and hold time.

Capture Time / Hold Time The Capture Time is the amount of time that the DBM system is gathering usage data vs the Hold Time which is the amount of time that data is not being captured. When added together, this is the total time of a specific calculation interval. The calculation interval is not the same as the shaping interval, these are two different processes. They are related so far as the calculation interval is used to collect flow data which is then used to determine top users. Max Kbps / Min Kbps These are the range of throughput speeds in which a top user will be forced to stay within whenever they are being shaped. All throttling will occur within this range. The network administrator can use this range to essentially guarantee bandwidth for other applications when utilization is high, or when there are a large number of top users. Note: Depending on your specific network requirements this range can be set very wide or very thin. The wider the range, the more bandwidth top users will be allowed to play with during periods of high utilization, the thinner the range the less available bandwidth the top users will have. This is also where the Advanced Parameters come in to play, which is what defined the various default throttle stages. Throttle stages allow top users to be slowly throttled so that they are not instantly shutdown. However, it may be the policy that any top user is instantly slowed down. In these cases the network administrator can change the starting throttle stage. The default stage is 1, which is the least constrictive, the most constrictive stage is 7, which applies the highest amount of throttling to a user and can significantly affect their available bandwidth. DBM Bypass: The network administrator has the ability to bypass network throttling for any network users by simply creating a bypass rule. These users will never be throttled by the adaptive shaping feature. This IP address must be a single individual static host/node.

Advanced Parameters: Within the advanced parameters section, the network administrator can change the predefined values for each available throttle stage. The defaults are found in the footnote to the right of the input. Stage One is the least severe, Stage Seven is the most severe so any parameters that are changed should reflect that concept in order to work properly, i.e. from the highest amount of bandwidth to the least (or most constrictive). DBM Reporting: (NOTE the reporting capabilities of the DBM system will be changed in future versions) The following is a demonstration of how the DBM Reporting function works, it can be found under the Reporting > DBM Reporting menu option. This chart shows the active and inactive DBM users. Active users are those which are being throttled, while inactive users are not being throttled, but may have been throttled in the past, which is why they may still have an associated Throttle Stage assigned to them. Configuration Assistance: Please contact XRoads Network support if you have any questions on how to configure these unique Dynamic Bandwidth Management functions of the EdgeXOS appliance via www.myxroads.com.