Warding off WAN Gridlock: Page 11 of 21

Michael J. DeMaria is an associate technology editor based at Network Computing's Syracuse University Real-World Labs®. Write to him at [email protected].

WAN bandwidth is expensive, but when congestion occurs, some administrators simply throw cash at the situation. This approach, however, doesn't address the underlying problem. Until you gain granular control over the way packets are prioritized, you'll be playing a zero-sum game, with users gobbling up your pricey bandwidth as fast as you bring it online. Moreover, as latency-sensitive applications, such as VoIP and videoconferencing, become more common and have to contend with FTP and P2P traffic for throughput, even fat pipes won't guarantee QoS.

What can give you the edge? Bandwidth management products, which rein in bandwidth-hogging applications, smooth out bursty traffic and guarantee minimum throughput for those users, groups or protocols you designate. We tested traffic shapers from Allot Communications, Lightspeed Systems, Packeteer, Radware and Sitara and gave Packeteer's product our Editor's Choice award for its granularity in setting policies, impressive classification engine and intuitive user interface.

Install a traffic shaper and you're bound to feel some political heat--and we're not talking about how many people are streaming Limbaugh on your LAN. We're referring to the massive debate and flame mail you will get for limiting protocols.

You probably know which protocols are overwhelming your network. Are people clogging up your bandwidth with e-mail or P2P traffic? In the enterprise, expect each administrator--the person in charge of VoIP, the Web dudes, the e-mail admin--to want highest priority. Before you jump into this quagmire, get a fair, well-thought-out policy down on paper, and get CxO-level buy-in for that policy.

If you're in an educational setting, the problem protocol is almost guaranteed to be P2P. But do you block P2P protocols outright? This is where politics--more specifically, avoiding a student uprising--comes into play. Blocking P2P completely will likely get you hung in effigy. A larger concern, however, is the legal aspects of P2P. Most P2P material traversing your network--including Kazaa, Gnutella and the infamous Napster--is copyrighted. Such transfers fall outside fair-use rules and are in violation of federal copyright law.