Bandwidth Control in SM modules

Hi,

I´m trying to set Bandwidht qoutes per SM, I´m trying to set values in the Uplink and Downlink Sustained Rate, and Uplink and Downlink Burst Allocated Rate, but I´m not sure if these values take effect. How can I mesure the bandwidht per SM. I did some link test but the Uplink and Downlink rates seem to be the same that the rest of the modules.

Thanks

Be sure that you have the AP’s configured correctly that the SM’s are registered to. The option for “Configuration Source” in the AP should be set to “SM”.

Thanks,

I change the “Configuration Source” in the AP to SM, but I still not sure if the data rate that I set in SM is working. Should I set the same values of Uplink and Donwlink Data Rate and Uplink and Downlink Burst Allocation in the AP, or I can set differents values per SM.

leave the bandwidth settings in the ap as they are. Set it to Configuration source SM.

Then set the bandwidth rates in the sm.

If you check the sessions in you rAP, the bandwidth settings are at the bottom of each SM info in the sessions list.

Set the AP for the max possible throughput

If you have the AP set for the SM to be the configuration source, it’s working.

A comment about bursting, some use it, others don’t. Currently we do not, however I am getting close to changing that for my residential customers and setting the burst to the alotted BW and the sustained to half of that.

My concern is that high utilization traffic will cause the speed to bounce so I don’t think I want to use it on my busines customers.

Jerry Richardson wrote:

A comment about bursting, some use it, others don't. Currently we do not, however I am getting close to changing that for my residential customers and setting the burst to the alotted BW and the sustained to half of that.

My concern is that high utilization traffic will cause the speed to bounce so I don't think I want to use it on my busines customers.


Jerry,

How's the burst been working for you? Any pros or cons you've noticed? I believed you've mentioned somewhere else that you started using it. Also, when you weren't using burst, did you just set the burst fields to 0?

These are the settings on an SM that I’m testing today for bursting…I have this also as a default configuration for some residential customers, but I want to look into bursting right now and see what the benefits/pitfalls are and how well it works.

Sustained Uplink Data Rate: 128
Sustained Downlink Data Rate: 256
Uplink Burst Allocation: 0
Downlink Burst Allocation: 0
Low Priority Uplink CIR: 0
Low Priority Downlink CIR: 0

This is where we set our customers, Gives them a great link test
4.2meg down
1.7megup

Sustained Uplink Data Rate: 128
Sustained Downlink Data Rate: 2500
Uplink Burst Allocation: 1000
Downlink Burst Allocation: 10000
Low Priority Uplink CIR: 0
Low Priority Downlink CIR: 0

Then back down to reg. speed

What kind of backbone do you have?

We are not using bursting, and so far it has not been an issue.

A clarification on bursting:
Bursting allows a customer to download an amount of data that is equivalent to the “burst” setting. This data will flow to the SM at whatever rate is available between the AP and SM at the time. If there are no other users sending/receiving data at the time, the data to that one customers will flow at a much higher rate that if there were a lot of users.

For example:
- Sustained set to 1M x 400k
- Burst set to 5M x 2M
- Link test shows 3M x 1M possible (Max burst rate)

When the download starts, it will burst all the way to the 3M rate supported by the link until 5M of data has been downloaded, then the data rate goes back to the sustained until the burst bucket refills.

Obviously there is a practical limit to this, if the AP is already running at it’s max throughput to all of the SM’s in sustained mode, there would be nothing left to burst. The assumption is that the AP has idle BW available to use for bursting.

But there is no way to “turn off” bursting, right? All you did is set the burst fields to ‘0’, correct? Just want to be sure :roll:

set it to 0 and there will be no bursting

I am a big fan of the burst. I give all customers a factor of 5 for burst. If the customer is paying for 1 meg, I give them 5 meg burst. It works mahvelous…

Not a single thing to lose here… Just allowing idle bandwidth to be used. I am only using 9 % of my gigabit pipe as it is.

I’m not disagreeing with you in any way and you may never run into this but I have found over the years that any “extra” you give to customers had better be something you will “always” give customers. The reason is that those little extras you give only start out as extras. In time they become expected. Once you give something, it is very difficult to take it away. No matter how clear you try to make it or how much you explain it, they will eventually perceive it as “something I am paying for” and expect it.

We started with dial-up about 11 years ago. Everything was pretty new to almost everyone so it wasn’t unusual for me to make a house call and we never charged for them. Over time customers not only came to expect a house call but they refused to even try to troubleshoot the problem over the phone. It didn’t work, they didn’t feel they should have to burn a single braincell or click a single mouse button or be walked through anything or even answer any questions, "I’m paying for it, it doesn’t work, COME FIX IT ". Well they wasn’t paying for it, I had only been doing it because at one time, we was just starting up, we didn’t have a lot of customers and I had the free time to do it. They didn’t want to hear that , they wanted “What they was paying for !”

Naturally the free service calls could not continue and even though it made a lot of people really angry no matter how we explained it we stopped. We started making it very clear to people that we do not make house calls, sorry. We wouldn’t argue with them about “but we are paying for it !” we simply refused to do it anymore.

We have run into almost the exact same problem with every single little extra , or ‘unenforced limit’ we ever gave away. It was cool and everyone loved the ‘freebie’ at first and then over time it stopped being a freebie in their eyes and became something they was paying for and expected.


dptexas wrote:
I am a big fan of the burst. I give all customers a factor of 5 for burst. If the customer is paying for 1 meg, I give them 5 meg burst. It works mahvelous…

Not a single thing to lose here… Just allowing idle bandwidth to be used. I am only using 9 % of my gigabit pipe as it is.

Doesn’t it depend on how much bandwidth you have to give? If you have a T1 then bursting could effect your network right? But what if you have a full DS3 line?

We use bursting and give an even larger burst than dptexas does. If our clients are web browsing and emailing, they’ll never use up the burst, and therefore have full pipe access. We have over 200 clients on 3 bonded T1s and won’t probably need to add any bandwidth until spring or summer. (We’re doing about 5 installs a week.) You can see our typical bandwidth use on our heaviest AP (running 90 clients) in this thread, second post down.

<crosses fingers> We seem to have well-behaved clients. 8)

We go ahead and leave the burst at the maximum and set the sustained rate using the full 7Mbps aggregate.

Of course we have a lot of bandwidth to spare on the NOC side.

Our bottleneck is the Canopy Advantage AP.

We sell our customers a 4Mbps down by 1Mbps up for example, but they get 5Mbps down and 2Mbps up aggregate. It’s great because they feel like they get more than they pay for (which they do most of the time).

Some times it’s less when things get real busy (but we keep our sector count low) but we never get complaints. Occassionally someone will mention it if they are a heavy user on a full sector, but since they get more than they are paying for usually, they never complain about it.