Many businesses rely on the Internet, so the use of bandwidth resources often leads to difficulties, and network management needs to pay attention to it at all times. For some users who rely on bandwidth to provide services (such as Internet cafes, community broadband, school dormitories and ISPs, etc.), if the bandwidth is insufficient and the users are not able to access the Internet, they will also complain frequently. In addition, there are many emerging applications now, such as crazy download software BT and Thunder, which occupy a lot of bandwidth, so bandwidth management has become a hot topic that everyone is paying attention to today. This article focuses on Internet cafes (also applicable to cell broadband), and introduces how to effectively manage bandwidth in three phases.
Recognize the principle
If you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools. As a manager, you must first understand some basic concepts of Internet applications in order to implement corresponding management. Here you need to understand the concepts of address, port, content, packets, routers, etc., and here we will focus on introducing packets.
When delivering content on the Internet, in order to ensure the safe and smooth transmission process, the content will be divided and head and tail information will be added to transmit it in a packet form. Each packet has the sending and destination address, the port used, the size of the content and the information required for transmission. The main purpose of the packet is to facilitate the distributed processing of the transmission work and to ensure that the transmission work is transferred from the sending address to the destination address in sequence as expected. Therefore, as long as the content of the packet can be unpacked, you can understand the relevant information of the packet. Generally, when performing bandwidth management, most of the transmission information is checked by analyzing packets.
In general, the purpose of various Internet applications is to transmit information content, but for effective transmission, the content will be packaged in a packet, and the packet will be forwarded between various networks through the router through mechanisms such as IP addresses and communication ports. Therefore, to effectively manage bandwidth, it is necessary to view various information of the packet and manage these transmission characteristics.
Example description
Generally, when users are surfing the Internet, such as browsing web pages or sending and receiving emails, the bandwidth required is about 150Kbps~200Kbps. If you take an ADSL with a downlink of 512Kbps as an example, ten people share an ADSL bandwidth at the same time when they go online, the response speed is acceptable. However, since the chances of all users surfing the Internet at the same time are not high, such bandwidth can generally satisfy users within 30 people.
However, when there are a lot of downloads, a user can take up most of the bandwidth. According to tests, in a general Internet cafe environment, the bandwidth that a BT user can occupy is often as high as 2Mbps to 5Mbps, which can occupy multiple ADSL bandwidth at once. When we provide support to users (such as communities, hotels and enterprises), we often find that users complain that they suddenly "changed cards" and that they received messages and surfed the Internet. They thought it was a problem with the router. After carefully checking the package, 90% of the cases were being downloaded by someone inside or watching online movies, which affected other people's normal homework.
It should be noted that download programs like BT often occupy both uplink and downlink bandwidth, affecting other users; for example, watching online movies, each user occupies about 0.8Mbps, so three or five users are enough to occupy one ADSL bandwidth.
In addition, when assisting users in bandwidth management, a common phenomenon is: "Bandwidth is originally intended for users, why should it be limited?" Little do we know that many situations often affect all other users, and in Internet cafes or communities, other users often "call for a long time" and no longer come to the door or ask for unsubscribe. The restrictions on specific people are just making it more inconvenient for a few people, such as downloading from a few minutes to an hour, or updating patches from a few seconds to a few minutes.
Therefore, whether it is an enterprise, Internet cafe, community or school, bandwidth should be regarded as an important resource, and only through appropriate management can it play a greater role. Next issue, I will introduce to you what tools can be used for bandwidth management.
In the previous report, we introduced the usage of bandwidth in detail different applications. This article mainly introduces the methods of managing bandwidth. Bandwidth management can be implemented from different perspectives, such as based on human specifications and whether the computer can access the Internet, but the most convenient and reasonable thing is to implement it through setting the router. Because routers are the external gateways of the LAN, the effect of centralized management can often be achieved through router control. Below, we will introduce the more common bandwidth management methods based on routers.
User or host control
Can be controlled for specific LANs or external hosts. For example, it is not allowed to access the Internet on an internal host, it is only allowed to access the Internet on an external host, or it is not allowed to access the Internet on an internal host. This approach is to regulate by restricting a user or host. For local area network users, it is not completely without disadvantages to control using IP. Some users will modify their IPs themselves to escape router control. In fact, each network card has a unique MAC address, which is difficult for ordinary users to change. Therefore, through the "IP and MAC binding" function, when allocating IP, some MAC addresses can only obtain specific IP.
Application to control
It can also be controlled using the ports of network applications. This is like an example of military interference to specific channels and disrupting communications. Since common applications often have specific ports, just find the corresponding port and allow or restrict it in the access rule setting. In addition to common application ports, in the face of ever-changing applications, network management can also set applications and corresponding ports by themselves to simplify the process of setting in the future.
Content controlled
The most direct way to manage bandwidth is to control the content transmitted, that is, control whatever content does not want to be transmitted through keywords or file names. For example, in some regulatory setting pages, web page content can be regulated, which is actually controlled based on the strings contained in the web page content.
WAN port is controlled
For multi-WAN port routers, bandwidth can also be allocated to different WAN ports through the allocation modes of different WAN ports. Currently, multi-WAN port routers have this function. For example, Xianuo Technology products can support three different bandwidth allocation modes: IP groups specify a specific IP user to a WAN port, the advantage is that different groups can be separated by bandwidth; IP load balancing is to dispatch different WAN ports in sequence according to the local area network IP to balance the use of bandwidth. Its advantage is that the same IP access flow direction can adapt to the communication characteristics of different applications through the same WAN port, and is not prone to errors; intelligent load balancing is to automatically distribute bandwidth by taking into account the application, usage bandwidth, WAN traffic and IP distribution.
In addition to the above control methods, there are other methods that can be managed. For example, in the access control rules setting in the firewall configuration, each rule can set a specified time, for example, the network management can set the working hours to start the control, and there is no control during the after-get off work and rest time.