About bandwidth allocation

What is bandwidth allocation?

The bandwidth allocation feature enables you to control the total bandwidth capacity that specified categories of connections can collectively consume on the appliance.

Using the Appliance Manager fields associated with bandwidth allocation, you can:

Set aside portions of your total bandwidth capacity into various-size capacity bandwidth pipes.
Assign connections matching a specified set of properties, such as protocol, source or destination IP addresses, and inbound (server side) or outbound (client side) communication to a bandwidth pipe.

All connections assigned to a specific bandwidth pipe share the total bandwidth space allocated for that bandwidth pipe. The appliance enforces the bandwidth limit, if necessary, by using buffers to space out both incoming and outgoing packets.

As a result, TCP connections, as well as protocol connections based on UDP, gracefully use the specified bandwidth pipe with a minimum of burstiness, allowing the appliance to enforce the bandwidth allocation rules efficiently.

Denying or allowing connections

You can also use bandwidth allocation rules to deny service to a category of connections completely, or allow service to that same category of connections with no bandwidth restriction whatsoever.

Practical uses for the bandwidth allocation feature

Practical uses for the bandwidth allocation management feature include the ability to

Restrict aggregate bandwidth by single protocol (IP, TCP, UDP, and NFS)
Limit aggregate bandwidth to or from a client or origin server
Limit the bandwidth usage on any given interface