Jeffrey A. Livermore, PhD is associate professor of Business Information Technology and Information Assurance at Walsh College. I’ve enjoyed meeting him at the Colloquia on Information Systems Security Education (CISSE) over the years and am pleased to present a contribution from him to the columns. Everything that follows is Dr. Livermore’s work with minor edits.
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Many organizations manage their network bandwidth by applying a set of network policies that limit the amount of bandwidth available to certain types of traffic. For example, limiting music downloads, instant messaging, and access to certain Web sites can improve network performance by limiting the amount of non-business traffic on an organization’s network.
Some organizations reported as far back as 2003 that more than half of their bandwidth was being consumed by music downloads and file sharing. College and universities seem to have the biggest problem with this and have been leaders in bandwidth management, as reported in a General Accounting Office report from 2004. Bandwidth is typically managed by using one of the numerous network appliances and firewalls that will provide this functionality.
No matter which bandwidth management solution is chosen, they are all rule-based. The network administrator writes a rule that assigns the amount of bandwidth available to different types of network traffic. This is how many administrators maintain the quality of service (QoS) necessary for some applications. Networks supporting VoIP telephone network often use rules to reserve adequate bandwidth to keep the telephone conversations from suffering interruptions and delays. Without reserved bandwidth, conversations might suffer if a user begins using an application like BitTorrent that can consume massive amounts of bandwidth and that is optimized to use as much bandwidth as possible.
Well written rules keep a network’s mission critical traffic moving freely while throttling down the recreational or non-business related traffic. It is important to keep these rules fresh and relevant to today’s network traffic patterns. Many organizations such as colleges find that their network usage evolves with time and the types of Web applications and services available to students and faculty. What worked so well last year may not work to anyone’s satisfaction today.
Watching Internet videos used to be purely a recreational activity on college campuses. Now many faculty members include videos in their PowerPoint presentation. Restricting video traffic would now mean restricting classroom instruction. The same applies to iTunes. Some faculty members include video and audio materials from iTunesU in their lectures. These materials are typically downloaded from Apple to a server somewhere on campus and then must be delivered across the network to the classroom at streaming speeds.
The point of these examples is that network usage is constantly evolving and network administrators need to adapt to this evolution when managing network traffic. Static rule sets and policies will lead to frustrated users and poor service delivery by the network administrators. These usage demands will be complicated by new computing and security hardware that will add to network overhead.
Many schools and organizations have installed or are evaluating the use of overhead projectors that receive their video input over the network (wired or wireless). These devices eliminate the need for running video cables in classrooms, conference rooms, and auditoriums. The downside of these devices is that they are another source of additional network traffic. The overhead of network projectors is dwarfed by the additional traffic produced by video cameras attached to the network. Some of these cameras are for promotional purposes but most are being integrated into the ever-tightening security precautions being implemented at colleges and universities.
The popularity of social network-based virtual worlds such as Second Life and massively multiplayer role playing games has altered network usage patterns at many organizations. According to a report from February 2010, there are 27 million people playing Farmville on any given day and 75 million in a month. The odds are that some of those millions of people are on your network and would like to play not only Farmville but also Mafia Wars, World of Warcraft and other popular network-based games. Social networks and games can consume a great deal of bandwidth and should be proactively managed along with other non-business applications like Internet radio and streaming media.
Keeping network management rules current is as important as keeping the digital signature files current in your virus and intrusion detection applications. New bandwidth thieves pop up almost as often as new viruses and other forms of malware. The only way to stay on top of this problem is to keep reviewing your bandwidth management rules and adjust them as needed.
Reviewing bandwidth management rules implies that a network is being proactively managed with capacity planning being part of an annual process. Updating rules goes hand in hand with adding capacity and making significant network or application changes. I don’t know of any organization that has shrinking bandwidth consumption. The usage trend is always upward as more and more bandwidth-intensive applications are being used in business and education.
Adapt or saturate.
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Jeffrey A. Livermore, PhD, is the former chief information officer of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. Before that, Jeff worked at a number of companies and also performed consulting/contracting work at the big three automotive firms. Jeff is also the author and moderator of a technology blog for the Heritage Newspaper syndicate.
