Classify Network Traffic

Procedures for identifying and organizing your network traffic

The way PacketWise organizes traffic dictates how it can analyze and control that traffic. Your traffic tree is the tool that organizes your traffic, and its configuration is a crucial choice in determining the features you have available.

For example, if your tree doesn't distinguish SAP from Oracle, then you can't measure distinct response times for each. Or, if your tree doesn't distinguish traffic to your Paris office from traffic to your Oslo office, then you won't be able to compare traffic volumes or give prescribed amounts of bandwidth to each branch.

Application discovery and the creation of a corresponding traffic tree are prerequisites for understanding application behavior and controlling its performance. Consider these examples:

• A network manager denies there's any RealAudio on his network. But PacketWise's auto-discovery could prove him wrong.
  
  
• Several departments share the cost of an application, depending on usage. But they can't analyze each department's usage unless they can first tell the difference between each department's traffic.
  
  
• All traffic to and from three remote, branch offices goes through one main site. One office tends to grab most of the WAN bandwidth, leaving the other two with poor performance. The main site could keep all branches running smoothly and equitably ... if it could recognize each office's traffic.
  
  
• Mission-critical applications running over Citrix are suffering sluggish performance due to the impact from bandwidth-hungry print traffic and file transfers. But before you can control bandwidth access differently for each application, you must first differentiate each application's traffic.
  

Traffic trees are very flexible. You can customize your tree's classes using many types of criteria including application, location, protocol, host lists, addresses, ATM virtual circuits, bit markings such as MPLS or ToS, and many other strategies.

We have instructions to create a few types of traffic trees along with their pros, cons, and implications. You are not limited to these trees, but you can use them in initial strategies. Choose between an application-based and location-based tree. Then, if you want a location-based tree, chose one of the three options. Follow the trees' links to see more.

• Application-based tree: analyzes and controls traffic based solely on on application, protocol, or other characteristics of the traffic itself. Suitable in all circumstances except when managing several locations' or departments' traffic with deliberately distinct strategies.
• Location-based trees: analyzes and controls traffic based on its source or destination first, then, optionally, on other criteria such as application. Suitable when managing several locations' or departments' traffic with disparate strategies.
  • Simple location-based tree: manages only the gross bandwidth going to each location. Appropriate for occasions when your primary concern is to provision bandwidth, and you don't particularly care how it's used or how applications perform (or when performance is managed by other PacketWise units)
  • Location-based tree with per-location applications: provides the most power and flexibility in management. Takes more time to configure and usually requires a larger product model due to the number of traffic classes required.
  • Location-based tree with global applications: manages each application with the same strategy for all locations. Most difficult tree to understand conceptually, but the easiest to configure and needs the least amount of traffic classes, matching rules, and configuration time. Provides a very scalable and easy-to-manage tree for traffic shaping but does limit visibility.