Fast Track

Enterprise Bandwidth Management

Sudhindra Holla

As more than 70 percent of Internet users use high-bandwidth applications including instant messaging, video clips and the like, the need for bandwidth management has assumed centre-stage. Explains Sudhindra Holla, Head, Business Development/Product Management, MRO-TEK, “Bandwidth optimisation is the need of the hour, and enterprises are constantly faced with the challenge of utilising it in an optimal manner.”

Organisations need to optimise their network bandwidth resources by prioritising and managing network traffic in real-time. As network traffic reaches pre-set thresholds, a bandwidth optimiser manages new non-business-related uses and thereby ensures that critical business applications have priority access to network resources.

In his presentation at Technology Senate 2005, Holla suggested some techniques of bandwidth management at the individual user level.

“Set bandwidth thresholds for non-business-related Web sites such as shopping and entertainment, and higher thresholds for work-related sites. Implement bandwidth management for bandwidth allocated to instant messaging sites by setting thresholds that are appropriate to specific users or groups, allowing chatting when ample bandwidth is available,” suggests Holla.

He also stressed on the need to implement bandwidth management for bandwidth allocated to streaming media by blocking those applications when the network is running at or near capacity.

Another area that needs to be looked at is managing wireless LAN bandwidth. Wireless networks have well-known bandwidth limitations offering data rates below those currently available on wired networks. Users of the most popular network applications such as e-mail clients and Web browsers are further handicapped by the fact that these applications are based on standard networking protocols that were developed for the wired world, and which are very poorly optimised for today’s wireless networks.

—Venkatesh Ganesh