Bandwidth is finite but the demand for bandwidth is not. With organizations putting up more and more applications and services, which are centralized on the network, bandwidth is getting consumed very fast. Even medium sized enterprises in India are getting hooked onto the net and are fast catching up on services delivered through the net. All this traffic is causing an enormous amount of strain on the networks, which are bursting at their seams. The result—unsatisfied users.

Today, emerging Internet applications are both bandwidth intensive and time sensitive. They often require support for voice, video and multimedia, which takes up more and more bandwidth. And since multiple users and applications access almost all network resources, the available bandwidth must be shared. While most organizations in India have sufficient bandwidth to cater to their average requirements, the response time is very poor, mainly due to the lack of bandwidth management. Using the tools available for managing bandwidth, a good IT manager can ensure that all applications keep running smoothly and users are satisfied. This also helps in cutting costs.

The quality or quantity of available bandwidth at any given moment cannot be predicted. Bandwidth reservation removes this unpredictability by allowing applications to reserve the bandwidth and quality of service required. It is equally difficult to control how the available bandwidth is shared. It is possible for an application or a user to control the available bandwidth, preventing other applications or users from using the network. This leads to networks being over built, providing additional capacity, at additional cost. This would not be necessary if bandwidth allocation could be controlled.

Bandwidth Distribution

Typically, an organization would be hooked up on a LAN at the branch or central office. Hence, unless there is a very complex application running on the LAN, which hogs a lot of bandwidth, a LAN does not require management per se. This LAN, in turn, is connected to the Internet pipe through a gateway. It is at this point that the capacity crunch strikes. Hence, it becomes imperative that this capacity is utilized to its fullest, while giving the best response time.

Traffic can be monitored in a variety of ways, but the two most common methods are—user-based and protocol-based. Typically, a service or an application on the network would be using a particular protocol.