Get Started with Traffic Management
Traffic Management enables you to set the maximum bandwidth available for different types of traffic, and to guarantee a minimum amount of bandwidth for specific traffic flows. Both the maximum bandwidth and guaranteed bandwidth apply only if the necessary bandwidth is available through the interface that handles the traffic.
Before you implement Traffic Management, you must determine the available bandwidth, and decide how much bandwidth you want to guarantee or limit for different types of network traffic.
Determine Available Bandwidth
To plan your traffic management implementation, you must know the available bandwidth of the interface used for the policy or policies you want to guarantee bandwidth. For external interfaces, you can contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to verify the service level agreement for bandwidth. You can then use a speed test with online tools to verify this value. These tools can produce different values depending on a number of variables. For other interfaces, you can assume the link speed on the Firebox interface is the theoretical maximum bandwidth for that network. You must also consider both the sending and receiving needs of an interface and set the threshold value based on these needs. If your Internet connection is asymmetric, use the uplink bandwidth set by your ISP as the threshold value.
Determine the Sum of Your Bandwidth
You must also determine the sum of the bandwidth you want to guarantee for all policies or applications on a given interface. For example, on a 1500 Kbps external interface, you might want to reserve 600 Kbps for all the guaranteed bandwidth and use the remaining 900 Kbps for all other traffic.
Traffic Management and OS Compatibility
- About Traffic Management in Fireware OS v11.9 and Higher
- About Traffic Management in Fireware OS v11.8.x and Lower