Keep your employees productive and your network efficient with bandwidth management. Bandwidth or network traffic can be measured and controlled easily with the right solution.

A user of a single computer with a dedicated connection can generally find out quickly where the culprit is, or what application is creating problems. Although it is not impossible, it is much more difficult for a network administrator to detect bandwidth issues, making bandwidth management a necessity.

High-speed networks are capable of supporting many types of services, such as data, voice, images and video. Each of these services have different bandwidth requirements and can create a whole host of bandwidth issues if bandwidth is not allocated properly. These issues include:

1. Cell phone loss

2. Latency or delayed response

3. Network slowness

4. Computer freezes

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Find bandwidth management tools and take them for a test drive

Bandwidth management has been a concern of large corporations and Internet service providers for years. But with more available network or Internet resources, it's becoming a problem for homes and small businesses as well. There are many bandwidth management solutions available today. View the bandwidth management list and test-drive bandwidth management solutions before making a purchase.

I recommend: Download3K offers a free trial version of its bandwidth management and firewall tool. This tool is a great choice for professionals interested in packaging traffic control with network security. Try Crysnet’s bandwidth management tool and see how easy it is to monitor and control your company’s bandwidth by applying filters or rules.

Explore the benefits of using a bandwidth management provider

As your network grows, bandwidth management and delivering quality services becomes more challenging. Regain control of your network infrastructure with the help of a bandwidth management solution that can filter your applications and provide traffic control, compression and caching. Bandwidth management solutions are typically managed and monitored with an easy-to-use web-based interface, providing you with a variety of bandwidth management information.

I recommend: LogiSense's Traffic Manager is a great solution for enterprises, as well as service providers. This product manages your bandwidth with server software or a hardware appliance. Blue Coat's PacketShaper is designed for large companies that need to maximize traffic or bandwidth across a wide area nework, or WAN.

Give high priority to sensitive data with bandwidth management

View a bandwidth management directory and use a program extension to manage bandwidth and eliminate client software. Preset rules will determine how you distribute bandwidth among your users, servers and other resources. ZENWorks for Networks is Novell's program extension.

I recommend: Bandwidth Splitter is an extension for Microsoft ISA Server, with added bandwidth management features that include real-time monitoring. With ZENworks, you can monitor traffic and provide real-time monitoring and reporting on policy-assigned network segments.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Check to see how well your company is doing with bandwidth management. Find a bandwidth speed test site that transfers at least 10 megabits of data with each test. Repeat this test on different days of the week and different times of the day.