Configuration Planning Example

This section contains an example of bandwidth management being used within the European network of the Example Corporation, at three points: Paris, Bonn, and London.

In the example, the Paris and Bonn sites each have a busy LAN, and route traffic from the LAN and from other sites on to the London site. From Paris to London there is a 256K line. From Bonn to London there is a 768K line. There is also a dial-up link directly from Paris to Bonn. London has its own LAN, and routes traffic from it and from Paris and Bonn to a site in the USA over a 10Mb line.

Figure 3-7 Bandwidth Allocation Planning for the Example Corporation

At all three sites, the network administrator monitored the actual network usage over a period, and asked users what they thought were the three most important uses of the network. The following sections contain the data for each site and show the configuration that was designed.

Paris

Figure 3-8 Actual Network Use for Paris Site

The network users at the Paris site consider e-mail, file transfer and access to the world wide web to be the most important uses of the network. The actual usage pattern is shown in Figure 3-8.

Using the data on network use and the user input, the network administrator designed the class hierarchy shown in Figure 3-9 and assigned the priorities and percentages of bandwidth shown in Table 3-1.

Figure 3-9 Class Structure for Paris Site

Table 3-1 Bandwidth Allocation and Priority of Classes on Paris Server

Class Description	Class Name	Parent Class	Percentage of Bandwidth Allocated	Priority
Root	root		100	1
http to Bonn	http-bonn	http	5	3
http to London or US	http-lon	http	10	3
http to elsewhere	http	root	20	5
telnet	telnet	root	30	1
System monitoring	snmp	root	5	1
e-mail	email	root	20	4
File transfer	ftp	root	15	7
Default	default	root	5	7

In batool and in the configuration file, you must specify the bandwidth allocated to a class and all its descendants. For example, the http-bonn and http-lon classes are both child classes of the http class. The http class and its decendents are allocated 20% of the bandwidth, of which the child classes are allocated allocated 5% and 10%.

With this configuration, the bandwidth used by FTP traffic is constrained to 15%, contrasting with the current usage figure of over 30%

Bonn

Figure 3-10 Actual Network Use for Bonn Site

The network users at the Bonn site consider order administration, e-mail and calendar access to be the most important uses of the network. The order administration system uses HTTP to transfer data. The actual usage pattern is shown in Figure 3-10.

Using the data on network use and the user input, the network administrator designed the class hierarchy shown in Figure 3-11 and assigned the priorities and percentages of bandwidth shown in Table 3-2.

Figure 3-11 Class Structure for Bonn Site

Table 3-2 Bandwidth Allocation and Priority of Classes on Bonn Server

Class Description	Class Name	Parent Class	Percentage of Bandwidth Allocated	Priority
Root	root		100	1
http to Paris	http-paris	http	18	2
http to London or US	http-lon	http	18	2
http to elsewhere	http	root	40	2
e-mail	email	root	20	6
Telnet for system administration	telnet	sysadmin	8	1
SNMP	snmp	sysadmin	10	4
System administration	sysadmin	root	20	1
Default	default	root	10	7

London

Figure 3-12 Actual Network Use for London Site

The network users at the London site consider e-mail, calendar access, and file transfer to be the most important uses of the network. The actual usage pattern is shown in Figure 3-12.

To design the class hierarchy and assign the bandwidth and priority to the classes for the London site, it is necessary to consider the following:

• The data on actual network use

• Information about user preferences

• The patterns in the traffic originating in Paris and Bonn, according to their own bandwidth management configurations

• The difference in capacity of the links connecting Paris and Bonn to London (the Bonn to London link has three times the capacity of the Paris to London link).

Taking all this into account, the network administrator decided to run the Solaris Bandwidth Manager software on the host that runs the routing software, and designed the class hierarchy shown in Figure 3-13.

The classes shown in parentheses are not actual classes, but remind the network administrator to allow bandwidth in a parent class where the child classes do not account for all the traffic. In the http class, for example, there are two child classes, for traffic to the US and to Europe. There will also be http traffic that is not going to the US or Europe. This traffic will be allocated to the http class, so the percentage of bandwidth allocated to the http class should not all be shared between the child classes. Table 3-3 shows the percentage of bandwidth and the priority assigned to each class.

Figure 3-13 Class Structure for London Site

Table 3-3 Bandwidth Allocation and Priority of Classes on London Server

Class Description	Class Name	Parent Class	Percentage of Bandwidth Allocated	Priority
Root	root		100	1
http	http	root	35	4
http to US	http-to-US	http	20	2
http to US from Paris	http-Paris-to-US	http-to-US	4	4
http to US from Bonn	http-Bonn-to-US	http-to-US	10	2
http to US from UK	http-UK-to-US	http-to-US	4	4
http to Europe	http-to-europe	http	10	4
Electronic mail	email	root	30	3
e-mail from Paris	email-paris	email	5	3
e-mail from Paris (IMAP)	email-paris-imap	email-paris	4	3
e-mail from Paris (SMTP)	email-paris-smtp	email-paris	1	6
e-mail from Bonn	email-bonn	email	15	3
e-mail from Bonn (IMAP)	email-bonn-imap	email-bonn	12	3
e-mail from Bonn (SMTP)	email-bonn-smtp	email-bonn	3	5
e-mail using IMAP	email-imap	email	7	3
e-mail using SMTP	email-smtp	email	2	5
FTP	ftp	root	15	7
System administration	sysadmin	root	10	2
Telnet	telnet	sysadmin	5	1
System monitoring	snmp	sysadmin	2	2
From system admin console	administrator	sysadmin	2	1
Default	default	root	5	7

The percentage of bandwidth allocated to a class containing traffic originating in Paris or Bonn takes into account the differences in the link capacity between those sites and the London site. For example, the classes for e-mail from Bonn have three times the allocation of the classes for e-mail from Paris.