Streamcore is introducing new software to help guarantee QoS over WANs that have been pieced together using links of varying size and quality.

Called StreamSense, the software works in conjunction with the company’s StreamGroomer appliances, which enforce traffic prioritization rules to ensure that network segments are fed traffic only as fast as they can handle it and still meet specified service quality.

StreamSense gives network managers the ability to provision, control and report on the network. The platform is designed for large businesses and service providers that have multiple StreamGroomer appliances in their networks.

Streamcore products compete against traffic-shaping equipment made by Packeteer, Juniper and Cisco, among others. This type of equipment is part of a WAN-optimization market that is growing at double digits per year, according to Infonetics.

Companies can place StreamGroomer appliances at network congestion points to gate traffic and release it so downstream network segments don’t get overloaded and can deliver defined QoS.

If a link or network device breaks and less bandwidth is available, StreamGroomer can throttle back certain applications based on prioritization rules set ahead of time to deal with such failures. Even in the most dire situations, the appliance allows enough of each type of traffic through to keep each application alive, says Streamcore CEO Eric Jeux.

For instance, non-critical applications would get less bandwidth to free up as much as possible for critical applications. If a 45Mbps DS-3 failed over to a 1.5Mbps DSL line, StreamSense could apply the same prioritization rules to traffic, but throttle it so it doesn’t overwhelm the smaller pipe.

Alternatively, that failover could trigger a different set of rules that slow down low-priority applications in order to maintain responsiveness of the most critical applications.

The gear also can shape traffic so applications perform equally well over different types of connections that have different performance characteristics. For example, the device can groom traffic to perform as well over a wireless connection where packet loss is relatively high, as it does over a dedicated T-1 with low packet loss.

Out of the box, the software sorts traffic into small-packet applications sensitive to delay and jitter, such as VoIP, and bulky applications such as file transfers that require lots of bandwidth. It assigns appropriate QoS to each traffic type and distributes bandwidth within each QoS class.