Product Reviews
Unclog Your Network
Want your network traffic to flow fast, furious and unfettered? If so, check out these Quality of Service and bandwidth management tools.
- By Michael Feuda
- 04/01/2001
While GuardianPro 5.02, NetGuard’s entry into the bandwidth management
arena, installs easily and is well documented, its interface is somewhat
difficult to manipulate. Resembling a spreadsheet, the interface is loaded
with numerous windows and click-on options (Figure 4). After several false
starts, I found myself in the application’s Bandwidth Control Strategy
Explorer.
Within Strategy Explorer, you’re first asked to create a “bandwidth strategy”
by separating your available resources into three categories: guaranteed,
prioritized and standby. Next, you add network objects, selecting from
users, hosts, networks and groups. Finally, you establish the rules governing
these objects and decide how bandwidth will be sliced and diced. Options
you can choose include destination, service, direction, priority, when
(hours and days), and action. You then can use Strategy Explorer to move
rules around and change option values.
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| Figure 4. GuardianPro’s Bandwidth Control Strategy
Explorer lets you allocate bandwidth for users and groups. |
GuardianPro’s Bandwidth Management Control Component allows you to use
a “balance beam” slider to allocate bandwidth between the guaranteed and
prioritized categories. For a quick test, I attempted to allocate 50 percent
to each category. With the slider, I came close to this figure; still,
it took fine mouse movements to do it. It would’ve been nice to have an
option box where I could’ve typed the exact percentage.
Perhaps GuardianPro’s best feature is its real-time network monitoring
capability. You can choose from a graphical or list presentation denoting
various network traffic flows. You then choose from a multitude of 2-D
and 3-D displays, and you can customize and filter traffic views.
As it addresses the bandwidth needs of individual users and groups, I
found that GuardianPro offers a unique approach to bandwidth management.
It forces you to take a global view, making you think about how exactly
you want to allocate your total network bandwidth.
About the Author
Michael Feuda, MCSE, NNCDS, is an independent writer. He has worked
with Microsoft products since the days of LAN Manager.