To help curb some of the bandwidth pain, Jim MacLeod of WildPackets identifies common issues and illustrates how to identify and overcome them.
Several years ago, Comcast upset many of its customers by rate-limiting peer-to-peer networks. Fortunately, your organization is probably not in the business of providing home Internet use. While there are valid uses of peer-to-peer downloading, such as Linux installations, the traffic and its content are difficult to police. Given that most peer-to-peer traffic uses random ports, you can address this traffic by applying the lowest priority – or even blocking – any traffic on non-standard ports. However, remember that protocols like VoIP may also use non-standard ports, so make sure your equipment tracks them based on known destinations or monitoring the SIP or other control traffic.