On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Lawrence Kago <lawrencekago@gmail.com> wrote:

Am looking at a potential clientele which need a internet and i really would want to dive them what they pay for according to the agreement,am therefore looking for a hardware/software that can split bandwidth among a number of users so that my customers don't feel cheated..

I know a switch will work but its not intelligent enough to allocate bandwidth to a certain IP.

Does anyone has an idea how to go about in this?

Hello @Lawrence. Before you spend on any hardware and if you have a Cisco, pls use the CAR function which can be written for any ip and any interface. Use CAR to set hard limits plus a burstable rate. TCP rate limiting is an antique method and given todays network hogs, you will be in trouble very soon. Try and move away from tcp hard limiting and onto protocol management where you would move service blocks of bandwidth into chunks of manageable protocols.

Consider this : You have clients A,B. A uses more http while B uses more ftp. In a TCP rate limiting scenario, say you created chunks of 256k with burst to 512k when conditions allow. Both A,B will hit these limits quickly even when using a single comp.

If you are a linux person, I'd highly recommned that you look at FreeBSD because your answer lies here, given costs and management. I'll not debate if linux or freebsd, but I know for a fact I'd choose FreeBSD anytime due to things like PPS and network throughputs. :-)

HTHs.