Abstract

Packeteer commissioned The Tolly Group to benchmark the effectiveness of its real-time, WAN bandwidth management product, PacketShaper, in enforcing quality-of-service in a multi-user, multi- service IP networking environment. The tests measured the relative bandwidth consumed by various traffic streams across an unmanaged link and then with PacketShaper managing the traffic. Test scenarios included both transaction and batch session traffic. Since the PacketShaper device is placed “in line” between the LAN and the router, The Tolly Group also verified the effectiveness of PacketShaper’s fault-tolerant “bypass” mode. Testing was conducted in August of 1997. 

Results show that PacketShaper effectively enforces quality-of-service in both transaction and batch oriented traffic scenarios. Furthermore, PacketShaper provides a rich and flexible set of bandwidth allocation options. Depending on the options implemented, sessions can be guaranteed minimum bandwidth, allowed to utilize unused bandwidth, or restricted to a fixed amount of bandwidth. Testing validated each of these options. Furthermore, The Tolly Group showed that traffic continued to flow, unmanaged, through the PacketShaper’s bypass circuits when the unit was powered off.