We know that modern businesses rely heavily on their broadband. VoIP calls, remote working over VPN and video conferencing are just a few examples.

In order to ensure that these services work during busy times it is important that we manage our network successfully. We look at all the traffic that our customers download and upload and determine what sort of traffic it is. This is done using a combination of deep packet inspection to match traffic against a database of signatures, the port the traffic is using and in certain cases the IP address of the source or destination of the traffic.

We regularly update the database of signatures to ensure that new applications are correctly identified as and when they are released. We also have processes in place for customers to raise requests to us directly should the traffic not be identified correctly.

By identifying the traffic in this way we can allocate different priorities to it. The highest priority is titanium. This includes time sensitive applications such as VoIP and gaming. The next highest is gold which includes web browsing, email, VPN and other remote access protocols, FTP and instant messaging. Unidentified traffic is classed as silver and the lowest priority is bronze which includes Peer-2-Peer traffic like BitTorrent and Binary Usenet.

On a network without traffic management, as the volume of traffic increases, some of the traffic will start to experience higher latency, increased packet loss and reduced speeds. As the network usage increases, more people would be affected by increased ping times and slower speeds. Without traffic prioritisation you will see the problems mentioned above. Different types of traffic are better at handling increased latency and packet loss. A VoIP call or video conferencing would start to break up, whilst a VPN session may disconnect or an interactive SSH session would see a delay between typing and what you typed appearing on the screen.

Our traffic management systems allow us to manage our network very differently. As we can identify different types of traffic we are able to control which type of traffic is affected. This allows us to maintain a high level of service on different applications even when the network is busy. As the network gets busier the first traffic to be affected is the bronze traffic, the P2P and binary Usenet, leaving the more interactive traffic like browsing, VoIP and VPN working as they should.

Even in the event of a major network fault we can ensure that the business critical services continue to work. If necessary we could block all P2P traffic to give the capacity to our business customers.

As more applications and devices are used, online traffic management will become increasingly important to give them the Quality of Service to work. VoIP, video conferencing and online applications are becoming more common and as a broadband provider it is our responsibility to ensure that they perform to the highest level possible. The prioritisation on our network is designed to ensure that they do and to offer our business customers the best possible service.

This entry was posted by Chris Cotterill on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 3:56 pm and is tagged with Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a reply below. Pinging is currently not allowed.