NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: STEVE TAYLOR AND JOANIE WEXLER ON WIDE 
AREA NETWORKING
09/14/04
Today's focus:  Managing WAN traffic on a per-flow basis

Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED],

In this issue:

* Per-flow capabilities important in traffic managers
* Links related to Wide Area Networking
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus:  Managing WAN traffic on a per-flow basis

By Steve Taylor and Joanie Wexler

When managing WAN bandwidth for optimal performance, there are 
many technologies that queue traffic, sense congestion so you 
can throttle back traffic to smooth out packet flows and chop up 
packets into more transportable sizes.

Many of these technologies are supported in traffic management 
appliances and sophisticated WAN access routers. When wading 
through the morass of technology options to invoke at the WAN 
edge to optimize application performance, there is no single 
solution that meets the requirements of all enterprises. Your 
choices will depend on the applications you support, how many 
sites you have, staff expertise and budget.

But note also that there are certain applications, such as VoIP 
and Citrix, which, while they may not require much bandwidth, do 
require a minimum amount to function at all. For these 
applications, you will want to configure your traffic management 
system so that you have control over the number of concurrent 
flows within a traffic class - something you should be sure your 
system can do.

For example, when using traffic management systems, the tendency 
is to allocate bandwidth based on a traffic class as a whole. A 
"class" is traffic you've deemed to be treated with the same 
priority (it can be an application, user group, traffic from 
particular site or some combination of these characteristics).

You prioritize a traffic class by allocating a certain minimum 
amount of bandwidth to it, putting a ceiling on how much 
bandwidth it can consume, marking a priority tag in it for 
treatment by the service provider in the WAN or by using a 
combination of these and other techniques.

But while 256K bits/sec of bandwidth is likely adequate, in 
aggregate, for 10 concurrent Citrix sessions (Citrix traffic 
could constitute a "traffic class"), it might not be adequate 
for more than 12 or 13 sessions, given that a single Citrix flow 
might require 20K bit/sec before dying on the vine. So one thing 
you might want to check out, capability-wise, in your traffic 
management system is your ability to allocate bandwidth within a 
traffic class on a per-flow basis. 
Per-flow treatment can be achieved using special per-flow 
queuing or TCP rate control techniques. Generally speaking, 
traffic management appliances are ahead of the curve on per-flow 
bandwidth allocation compared with routers.

RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

Boosting TCP WAN performance
Network World Wide Area Networking Newsletter, 08/19/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/frame/2004/0816wan2.html

Beyond network traffic management
Network World Network Optimization Newsletter, 08/31/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/accel/2004/0830netop1.html

Cisco acquires carrier traffic management firm
Network World Fusion 08/30/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/weblogs/routers/006114.html

Making WANs more LAN-like
Network World Wide Area Networking Newsletter, 07/06/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/frame/2004/0705wan1.html

Cisco, 3Com fire up new WAN routers
Network World, 09/13/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/091304routers.html
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Steve Taylor and Joanie Wexler

Steve Taylor is President of Distributed Networking Associates 
and Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of Webtorials.Com. For more 
detailed information on most of the topics discussed in this 
newsletter, connect to Webtorials.Com 
<http://www.webtorials.com/>, the first Web site dedicated 
exclusively to market studies and technology tutorials in the 
Broadband Packet areas of Frame Relay, ATM, and IP.  He can be 
reached at <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology 
writer/editor in California's Silicon Valley who has spent most 
of her career analyzing trends and news in the computer 
networking industry. She welcomes your comments on the articles 
published in this newsletter, as well as your ideas for future 
article topics. Reach her at <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by SBC 
Dialing for Dollars 
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An apples-to-apples comparison showed that a centralized, 
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ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the WAN newsletter:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/frame/index.html
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