Peer-to-peer downloading, video streaming, and instant message applications
consume network bandwidth and can impact productivity. Bandwidth control reduces network
congestion by controlling communications, reducing unwanted traffic, and allowing
critical
traffic or services the appropriate bandwidth allocation. Bandwidth control gives
all users fair
access to resources and ensures better access to resources that are more central to
the
organization. Similar to policy rules, bandwidth control can limit traffic based on
a source IP
address, user or group, traffic type, and time of day.
Bandwidth control rules can be as general or specific as needed. The bandwidth control
rules
are compared against the incoming traffic in sequence. Because the first rule that
matches the
traffic is applied, the more specific rules must precede the more general ones. For
example, a
rule for a single application must precede a rule for all applications if all other
traffic-related settings are the same. If the traffic does not match any of the rules,
the
traffic uses the remaining bandwidth.