Eight Tips for Bandwidth Management

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.