Bandwidth management

Bandwidth management is the process of measuring and controlling the communications (traffic, packets) on a network link, to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link, which would result in network congestion and poor performance of the network. Bandwidth is described by bit rate and measured in units of bits per second (bit/s) or bytes per second (B/s).

Effective management of bandwidth is important when integrating players into an existing network of any size. Bandwidth management is not performed by the player itself, but by switches and routers designed for the purpose – in particular, technologies based around Quality of Service ("QoS") are relevant to any installation. Some small-office/home-office routers employ their own methods of traffic prioritization as well – it is not always necessary to use enterprise-class equipment.

Notes:

• The player is efficiently caching the content to conserve bandwidth. See the full article on Caching for more details.
• If employing streaming on a network with multiple players, consider delivering the stream via multicast (instead of unicast), if supported by the rest of the network infrastructure, as it significantly reduces the bandwidth required to deliver multiple concurrent streams. It is relatively straightforward to plan for network capacity in regard to streaming content, as the bandwidth can be somewhat fixed. However, note that the network must consistently support the aggregate of all the data required. A 100mbps network running 10 x 5mbps streams will work only if other services do not use the bandwidth.
• The bandwidth requirement is harder to estimate when using Pull Mode (or Client/Server mode) because these services use TCP, and native TCP congestion control is aggressive and will attempt to use all available bandwidth. Most other services present on the network will also consume bandwidth in the same manner, including VoIP, SAP, File and print services, and other common corporate services.
• Ideally, put bandwidth-intensive services on separate logical or physical networks, or employ traffic-shaping technology to prioritize them efficiently.