Network Bandwidth Management

With increased usage of networked applications, a number of companies are employing services to support every day operations. It is very important for every organization to stay within its budget constraint and at the same time avail the desired communication resources. In order to prevent traffic congestion and maintain uniform accessibility and usage of applications related to business, these organizations make use of network bandwidth management.

What is the work of network bandwidth management tools?

The available bandwidth determines the performance and speed of a network application. In case of file-transfers compression and protocol manipulation enhance the speed. Some companies are concerned about the bandwidth availability as it affects traffic speed or sets a limit to accessibility.

In case, where applications are to be streamed, the correct bandwidth management solution should be applied. This is done by remedying the situation using bandwidth management tools. The tools give the ability of controlling network utilization and traffic prioritization to the network operator. Hence, the amount of data transmitted over a channel in a certain amount of time, also called bandwidth, can be controlled by the tools.

The bandwidth managers control communications. They allow high priority traffic to use up more bandwidth than that with a lower priority. Thus bandwidth management is given very much importance in business-related applications, like e-commerce transactions, etc.

What is the role of a bandwidth manager?

A bandwidth manager is software that offers a cost-cutting solution with regard to bandwidth and network usage. It generally monitors the network traffic and sets a limit for the usage of bandwidth as per your choice. In some situations it successfully reduces your bandwidth requirements.

The software ensures Quality of Service (QoS). To manage bandwidth efficiently, you can set speed-throttling rules for certain IP addresses or ports, or bandwidth limit for every internet user. All it needs is a network connection, to function.

A bandwidth manager includes two media access controllers connected to physical layer transceivers. The bandwidth usage data is computed for every IP address, packet by packet. In case bandwidth is present in excess, it is blocked or mitigated.

Factors responsible for the development of bandwidth management, in recent times

1. Number of users on various networks, has increased.
2. Number of listeners of radio stations and viewers of video clips on the internet has increased.
3. There has been a development of file-swapping on the internet.
4. Usage of E-commerce applications has increased.

Is bandwidth management evolving?

There is advancement in technology and usage of network-based applications has increased. Bandwidth management tools should evolve to keep pace with the new applications. Previously certain ports were blocked to manage bandwidth. But due to evolution of bandwidth management nowadays the ports can be changed.