Control: Users want more of it when dealing with their WANs, and bandwidth management vendors are lining up the goods to make it happen.
Orchestream, NetReality and Allot Communications are rolling out products that will let users divvy up their bandwidth using standards-based technology and centralized policy management systems.
Orchestream later this month will unveil its Orchestream/Enterprise server software. Orchestream/Enterprise establishes quality-of-service policies throughout an enterprise network using the IETF's Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv).
Diff-Serv is an IETF specification that lets network executives set a variety of classes of service over WAN connections. By marking the header of an IP packet with the appropriate tag, each router or switch supporting Diff-Serv will know how to classify that IP packet, based on the policies the network executive has established. For end-to-end support, all network nodes have to support Diff-Serv.
Orchestream/Enterprise allows network managers to specify policies, such as how much bandwidth to give different classes of traffic, and to implement those policies in different brands of network hardware. The product ships with the ability to implement policies in routers and switches from Cisco, Nortel Networks and Xedia, but third parties can develop drivers to propagate policies to other vendors' hardware.
Orchestream/Enterprise consists of a central policy server running on Windows NT or Solaris, backed up by an Oracle database. The server communicates policies to agents residing on the same server or on others distributed throughout the enterprise. The agents ensure these rules are enforced at the proper time - a policy might only be in effect for a certain time of day. Orchestream/ Enterprise will be generally available by mid-year, with pricing starting at about $35,000.
Integrated policy management servers for bandwidth management systems are critical to business users, says Eddie Hold, senior analyst at Current Analysis, a Sterling, Va., consulting firm. Cisco this week announced its first policy manager, while only a handful of other firms, including NetReality and Ukiah Software, are actually shipping products, he says. Without a centralized approach, a user would have to make software changes to each bandwidth management device as opposed to making the change once and updating all the devices through the network.
Orchestream isn't alone in supporting Diff-Serv for the first time. Next week, NetReality will introduce the latest version of firmware for its WiseWan bandwidth management devices. WiseWan 3.0 supports Diff-Serv and will be available next month to all WiseWan 200 and WiseWan CPE bandwidth management customers at no additional charge.
NetReality's existing queuing lets users carve up their bandwidth and dedicate it to specific applications. Diff-Serv then lets users set further priority levels within each queue.
Copeland Lumber Yards last week inked a contract with NetReality to deploy WiseWan 200s in its 68 stores, says James Summers, LAN/WAN manager at the Portland, Ore., retail lumber chain. Copeland is running all IP traffic over its frame relay network, but the network is suffering.
"We are using telnet sessions to send accounting traffic back and forth between headquarters and the lumber yards," Summers says. "Those sessions were getting creamed if any other traffic was sent at the same time."
Now WiseWan lets Summers guarantee 36K bit/sec worth of bandwidth for telnet sessions on each 56K bit/sec frame relay link. In addition to controlling bandwidth, he has been able to tag telnet traffic as top priority with guaranteed delivery.
Allot Communications is also coming out with product support that will let customers set differing priority levels. Allot will support Diff-Serv in its latest version of firmware, AC 3.0, for its AC200 and AC300 bandwidth management devices.
In addition to rolling out Diff-Serv, the company is announcing its Allot Policy Manager. This is Allot's first centralized policy manager that will let network executives set rules for all AC200 and AC300 devices on their networks. Allot Policy Manager is also able to retrieve data from other network directory services. Allot Policy Manager runs on a Windows NT server and will ship in June for $9,995.
