Traffic Shaping

Traffic shaping (also called packet shaping) is a bandwidth management technique that delays the flow of certain types of network packets to ensure network performance for high priority applications. Traffic shaping inherently limits the amount of bandwidth that a particular type of application can consume. It is mainly used to guarantee high quality service against network traffic related to business.

The most common type of traffic shaping is application-based traffic shaping. The fingerprinting tool is first used to identify the application associated with the packet. Based on this, a specific traffic shaping strategy is applied. For example, application-based traffic shaping can be used to limit maximum peer-to-peer file sharing while providing maximum bandwidth for business-critical applications such as potential Voice over IP (VoIP).

Many application protocols use encryption to avoid application - based traffic shaping. Route-based traffic shaping can be used to prevent applications from bypassing traffic shaping policies. Route-based traffic shaping applies a packet throttling policy based on the source and the expected destination of the packet's previous address.

For limited network resources, bandwidth priorities are required. Traffic shaping is one of the most important technologies to ensure high quality service for business applications and data. This is the basic requirement of the network firewall.

The Barracuda CloudGen Firewall has powerful QoS features, so you can apply fine-grained policies to guarantee the service of selected traffic within the WAN. The QoS technologies supported by the Barracuda CloudGen firewall include traffic shaping, traffic prioritization, and bandwidth splitting to allocate bandwidth limits for specific types of traffic. To select traffic of various priority categories, the available real-time traffic analysis can be used to determine whether network traffic is sent by a business critical application or by an application deemed unnecessary I will.

In this regard, alternatives to traffic shaping are application acceleration, WAN optimization and compression. This is fundamentally different from traffic shaping. Traffic shaping defines bandwidth rules, but application acceleration uses a variety of technologies such as TCP performance enhancement agents. On the other hand, WAN optimization and compression (WOC) uses compression and difference algorithms and techniques to compress the data stream, or simply to send the difference in updating the file. The latter is very effective for troublesome protocols like CIFS

The most common type of traffic shaping is application-based traffic shaping. The fingerprinting tool is first used to identify the application associated with the packet. Based on this, a specific traffic shaping strategy is applied. For example, you can use application-based traffic shaping to limit maximum peer-to-peer file sharing while providing maximum bandwidth for business-critical applications such as lurking Voice over IP (VoIP). Many application protocols use encryption to avoid application - based traffic shaping. Route-based traffic shaping can be used to prevent applications from bypassing traffic shaping policies. Route-based traffic shaping applies a packet throttling policy based on the source and the expected destination of the packet's previous address.

Traffic shaping, also called packet shaping, is a sort of network bandwidth management used to manipulate and prioritize network traffic, reducing the impact of many use cases on other users. Traffic shaping identifies and classifies traffic flows by priority. High priority traffic is forwarded immediately and low priority traffic uses different methods for rate limiting. Traffic shaping can be centrally managed by traffic management and network management system to maintain network reliability, availability and smooth operation. As traffic pattern and network capacity requirements change, you can implement network control strategies as part of network automation strategy.