Solved: bandwidth allocation

suthomas1 · ‎05-31-2010

Hi,

How different is bandwidth allocation or shaping on cisco routers and other devcies ( like specific packetshapers, packeteer etc).

Does it mean shaping will apply even if there is no congestion or only if congestion is seen.

Appreciate your help!

Calin C. · ‎05-31-2010

Hi there!

Shaping will apply despite line being congested or not. Traffic shaping is used to guarantee a minimum amount of bandwidth for certain class and traffic policing to limit a class traffic to a maximum amount of bandwidth.

Usually from on-hand experience, provider will police the bandwidth and customers will shape (to avoid packet drop on the provider side).

Regarding your question about Cisco vs others, I have more experience with Cisco, but I believe that in terms of definition of what shaping, policing and so on it should be the same. The configuration and specific features may be different from product to product.

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Calin C. · ‎05-31-2010

Hi there!

Shaping will apply despite line being congested or not. Traffic shaping is used to guarantee a minimum amount of bandwidth for certain class and traffic policing to limit a class traffic to a maximum amount of bandwidth.

Usually from on-hand experience, provider will police the bandwidth and customers will shape (to avoid packet drop on the provider side).

Regarding your question about Cisco vs others, I have more experience with Cisco, but I believe that in terms of definition of what shaping, policing and so on it should be the same. The configuration and specific features may be different from product to product.

rajatsetia · ‎05-31-2010

Hi,

Agree with Calin that shaping is concept which is independent of vendor. Only configuration & specific features may change.

But products like packeteer give many more features like compression and also they have much better monitoring & reporting features and specifically meant to do traffic management rather than cisco routers where shaping is one of the feature.

Like I have worked on peribit (now Juniper WX series) , they have MSR (Molecular sequence reduction) technology for compression on WAN link.

A typical scenario to use bandwidth optimising solutions is where you have large setup , many branch offices end up choking your datacenter. You deploy these compression boxes on you WAN.

If only shaping is required & setup is not very large, your router will do the trick for you.

Hope this helps

Kid Regards,