Application QoS/Throttling

The EdgeXOS appliance is one of the few bandwidth management appliances on the market that provides the level of granular shaping as our policy-based shaping rules provide.

Bandwidth Appropriation

Network resources are a limited commodity and there is a constant battle for bandwidth by both critical and non-critical applications. XRoads Networks helps you better allocate these limited resources to those applications which your organization depends on. The EdgeXOS's shaping options include the ability to instantly prioritize critical applications and URLs and set lower priorities for non-critical applications.

Policy-Based Shaping

Give network administrators the ability to set specific limits for certain applications, users, and/or groups of users. The shaping policies enable a great deal of flexability in how bandwidth is allocated and reserved. Additionally, ppolicy-based shaping can be controlled based on network utilization, i.e. if utilization reaches 'x' policies can be applied to limit certain application which may be allowed to use more bandwidth when overall utilization is low.

Granular Policy-Based Control

Using the policy-based shaping a network administrator can set specific and exact (down to 10Kbps) bandwidth usage rules. What this means is that the administrator has complete control to allocate bandwidth as they choose and guarantee that certain servers, end-users, applications get the bandwidth they need.

Bandwidth Groups & Policies

When creating a new policy, the first step is to initially define a bandwidth group to which the policy will be bound. Bandwidth groups can be defined based on shared or single group delegation. Within a group the administrator can set the Max Bandwidth, Min Bandwidth, and Burst Bandwidth for a given group. Additionally the administrator has the ability to also set the queuing rules for a specific group with up to 12 levels of priority.

Once a group is defined a policy must be assigned to the group. Policies can be defined using the following criteria:

  • Name
  • URL Address
  • IP Address / Network
  • Application Type
  • Port / Protocol
  • Source / Destination
  • Layer 7 String
  • QoS Level
  • and MAC

Each policy will automatically generate usage statistics which can also be used for end-user or department billing purposes.

Without The Edge Platform

Slow screen loads, delayed responsiveness, high latency. All characteristic is poor network performance. What are the costs involved when end-users can't access business-critical applications due to poor network performance?

Opportunity Costs

When a network is performing poorly how does that effect the bottom line? If sales transactions can not be submitted in a timely fashion or follow-ups can not done on time how does that translate to lost revenue?

Reduced Productivity

While end-users may try to be as productive as possible, when network slowdowns cause applications to become unresponsive there is not much that can get accomplished. How much time is wasted each day by end-users attempting to access a business-critical application, timing out do to traffic spikes, or getting screen refreshes so slow that multiple button clicks cause duplicate entries?

MPLS End-to-End QoS

When connecting to an MPLS network, packets coming in and out of the network must keep the Diffserv marking throughout the process or shaping could be lost as it enters or leaves the local network.

Application Prioritization

The EdgeXOS appliance supports several methods for prioritizing traffic, including session limiting (where only so many sessions are allowed per second), URL shaping (where traffic can be prioritized based on the destination), and application shaping (where the traffic can be prioritized based on a defined application classification).

Administrative Shaping

Real-time QoS

These methods for controlling bandwidth are called administrative shaping controls. They do not provide the granularity that policy-based shaping provides but do allow the administrator to set more general rules for which traffic is preferred and which traffic has lower important for the organization.

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Application Classification

The EdgeXOS includes a number of pre-defined applications from which to choose from Application Listing however the network administrator can also define their own applications based on:

  • Name
  • Protocol
  • Port (Source / Destination)
  • and String Identifier

Application Prioritization

Once define an application can be set to one of 5 levels of prioritization within the shaping engine. By changing the queuing for each level the EdgeXOS platform is able to effect application responsiveness and smooth packet streams.

URL Prioritization

Similar to application shaping the EdgeXOS is also able to prioritize bandwidth based on the destination URL. This is useful if end-users go to a specific website and/or SaaS service. It can also be used for prioritizing certain FTP sites, or for Citrix and RDP users. Simply define the remote URL/network and assign the level of priority.

Session Limiting

One of the many problems which peer-to-peer clients create is that when they start they launch many if not hundreds of sessions in order to speed up the download of recreation audio, video, and software files. These large session counts have the effect of slowing down networks. With session limiting enabled, peer-to-peer applications are limited to the number of sessions they can use, and this in turns ensures more equal distribution of bandwidth.