Subdivide Bandwidth

Instructions to divide the bandwidth already defined for an application (or other traffic class) among subordinate subsets

For example, if you already limited file transfers to 15 percent of your capacity, you could then reserve half of that 15 percent for the Sales department's transfers.

Note that this is not the appropriate solution for dividing bandwidth into equal-sized portions for different users (see Provision Bandwidth Equitably).

Steps:

1. Make sure you already have a traffic class with an associated partition defined.
   
   
2. Create a traffic class for the subset you want to contain or protect. Define it as a child of the class to which you already assigned a partition.
   
   For example, create a traffic class to identify the subset of file transfers that are initiated by anyone in the Sales organization's subnet. Define a SalesFTP class under the FTP class.
   
   For background information see Traffic Tree Overview and Traffic Classification Overview.
   
   
3. Determine what percentage of of the parent class' bandwidth you want to reserve for this traffic subset. This minimum serves as protection for the traffic subset.
   
   For example, you could reserve 30 percent of the FTP bandwidth for the Sales group.
   
   
4. If you're going to use an explicit bits-per-second size for the child class' partition (rather than a percentage), view partition information to make sure your minimum from the previous step does not exceed the parent class' partition minimum.
   
   For example, it wouldn't make sense to give SalesFTP 256 Kbps if FTP, its parent, only had 128 Kbps.
   
   
5. Determine the maximum amount of the parent class' bandwidth you want the subset to be able to access.

   For more information about choosing partition sizes, see Sizing a Static Partition.
   

6. Create a partition for your child class to protect or contain its traffic. In the Size field, enter the minimum you determined in step 3. If you want the partition to use available excess bandwidth when needed, select the Burstable checkbox and enter the maximum you determined in step 5.
   
   For background information, see Partition Overview.
   
   
7. Repeat the entire procedure for any additional subset of your parent class that you want to manage separately.