Concept
Bandwidth management
Related concepts (7)
Token bucket
The token bucket is an algorithm used in packet-switched and telecommunications networks. It can be used to check that data transmissions, in the form of packets, conform to defined limits on bandwidth and burstiness (a measure of the unevenness or variations in the traffic flow). It can also be used as a scheduling algorithm to determine the timing of transmissions that will comply with the limits set for the bandwidth and burstiness: see network scheduler.
Network traffic measurement
In computer networks, network traffic measurement is the process of measuring the amount and type of traffic on a particular network. This is especially important with regard to effective bandwidth management. Network performance could be measured using either active or passive techniques. Active techniques (e.g. Iperf) are more intrusive but are arguably more accurate. Passive techniques have less network overhead and hence can run in the background to be used to trigger network management actions.
Rate limiting
In computer networks, rate limiting is used to control the rate of requests sent or received by a network interface controller. It can be used to prevent DoS attacks and limit web scraping. Research indicates flooding rates for one zombie machine are in excess of 20 HTTP GET requests per second, legitimate rates much less. Hardware appliances can limit the rate of requests on layer 4 or 5 of the OSI model. Rate limiting can be induced by the network protocol stack of the sender due to a received ECN-marked packet and also by the network scheduler of any router along the way.
Leaky bucket
The leaky bucket is an algorithm based on an analogy of how a bucket with a constant leak will overflow if either the average rate at which water is poured in exceeds the rate at which the bucket leaks or if more water than the capacity of the bucket is poured in all at once. It can be used to determine whether some sequence of discrete events conforms to defined limits on their average and peak rates or frequencies, e.g. to limit the actions associated with these events to these rates or delay them until they do conform to the rates.
Bandwidth (computing)
In computing, bandwidth is the maximum rate of data transfer across a given path. Bandwidth may be characterized as network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth. This definition of bandwidth is in contrast to the field of signal processing, wireless communications, modem data transmission, digital communications, and electronics, in which bandwidth is used to refer to analog signal bandwidth measured in hertz, meaning the frequency range between lowest and highest attainable frequency while meeting a well-defined impairment level in signal power.
Traffic shaping
Traffic shaping is a bandwidth management technique used on computer networks which delays some or all datagrams to bring them into compliance with a desired traffic profile. Traffic shaping is used to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, or increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds. It is often confused with traffic policing, the distinct but related practice of packet dropping and packet marking. The most common type of traffic shaping is application-based traffic shaping.
Bandwidth throttling
Bandwidth throttling consists in the intentional limitation of the communication speed (bytes or kilobytes per second), of the ingoing (received) or outgoing (sent) data in a network node or in a network device. The data speed and rendering may be limited depending on various parameters and conditions.