Managing bandwidth allocations between competing recreational and non-recreational traffic on campus networks

Network performance is a serious concern faced by many campus network managers across the country. As demand for entertainment-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications that involve the transfer of large audio and video files continues to grow, managers are faced with the increasingly difficult task of determining how much bandwidth should be allocated to these applications. Unrestricted P2P traffic has the potential to monopolize bandwidth and severely degrade network performance. University IT managers are placed in a particularly difficult position, because they must juggle demands for non-recreational traffic without severely restricting recreational use of the network. This paper discusses a solution for optimizing bandwidth allocations on a campus gateway Internet link.