UBM

What is UBM?

Network optimisation is a field that addresses a fundamental need in organisations to ensure faster and more efficient networks.

Unified Bandwidth Management (UBM) is a comprehensive and dedicated network appliance that serves as a solution for aspects of network optimization such as speed, reliability and efficiency.

Unified Bandwidth Management is the term used to describe the broad functionality of the UBM, which is the capability to perform multiple bandwidth management technologies, incorporated into a single appliance.

These technologies include Internet Link Load Balancing, Internet Bonding, VPN Bonding, Bandwidth Management controlled through an administration interface.

Unified Bandwidth Management integrates these features with multiple WAN interfaces to provide Internet connection reliability and greater bandwidth distribution capabilities.

UBM elements

Organisations can optimise their Internet and VPN performance and maximise use of their bandwidth with the three main aspects of UBM: Internet Load Balancing, Internet Bonding and Bandwidth Management.

Internet Link Load Balancing

This enables organisations to distribute Internet traffic over two or more ISP connections and thus have access to higher bandwidth capacity and ensure bandwidth availability. In an organisation with several end users, each user is either connected to the next available or least loaded ISP connection.

Internet Link Load Balancing with multiple ISP connections effectively speeds up critical applications (downloading, browsing, etc.) and enhances audio/voice quality (VoIP, Video streaming, etc.).

Internet Link Load Balancing also provides the reassurance and benefit of a more reliable Internet connection in the event of an ISP connection failure. When an ISP connection is lost, the UBM will automatically reroute Internet traffic over the remaining active ISP connection(s).

Internet link load balancing is the term used for the following to technologies - Outbound Load Balancing and also Inbound Load Balancing.

• Outbound Load balancing – The UBM appliance distributes outbound traffic from end users within the organisation network across multiple ISP connections.
• Inbound Load balancing – The UBM appliance distributes inbound traffic originating from client requests to hosted servers across multiple ISP connections.

Internet Bonding

This enables organisations to combine 2 or more ISP connections together in order to create one, big connection and have access to the total bandwidth capacity. This increases both upload and download bandwidth capacity of the combined ISP connections.
Internet Bonding allows organisations to effectively speed up critical applications (downloading, browsing, etc.) and ensures a higher and consistent flow of bandwidth for audio and video applications (VoIP, Video streaming, etc.).

Internet Bonding also provides the reassurance and benefit of a more reliable Internet connection in the event of an ISP connection failure. When an ISP connection is lost, the UBM appliance will ensure that all other ISP connection(s) remain active.

Internet Bonding is the term used for Client ISP Bonding, Datacentre Internet Bonding and also VPN Bonding.

• Client Internet Bonding – The UBM appliance bonds ISP connections from the organisation network to deliver higher bandwidth capacity to end users.
• Datacentre Internet Bonding – The UBM appliance bonds ISP connections from the ISP side to deliver dedicated high bandwidth to multiple client organisations.
• VPN Bonding – The UBM appliance bonds multiple ISP connections between 2 or more sites to increase the speed and reliability of VPNs.

Bandwidth Management

This enables organisations to manage, control and monitor all Internet traffic being distributed across ISP connections within the network to ensure efficient and effective usage of the total bandwidth capacity.

Bandwidth management enables organisations to prioritise applications (e.g. email), services (e.g. VoIP) and end users (e.g. management), to ensure critical traffic has preferential access to Internet bandwidth over noncritical traffic.

Traffic can be monitored to identify areas or times where use of bandwidth is high or abnormal. Levels of bandwidth consumer according to end user or application can also be identified. Bandwidth management provides efficient control over bandwidth capacity and therefore can reduce network congestion, lower usage costs, and prevent bandwidth abuse.

Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities including the following:
Bandwidth resources can be allocated to ensure that critical and time sensitive services (e.g. VoIP, Video, etc.) are always available and greater access is provided during peak periods.

Bandwidth resources can be allocated at different ratios according to end users, applications, and/or services. Any remaining bandwidth can be set to ‘default’ to avoid any one source from dominating the bandwidth.

It is also possible to further specify QoS policies which enable a source to utilise any available bandwidth allocated to another source if it exceeds its own capacity.

How organisations can use Unified Bandwidth Management

Faster Internet speed

UBM delivers high-speed Internet to organisations and end users through the process of aggregating ISP connections to achieve higher bandwidth capacity and implementing traffic routing policies to ensure bandwidth availability for mission critical applications.

The UBM can increase download and upload speeds and quicken audio or visual streaming. Quicker speeds can ensure quicker communication and completion of end user tasks.

More bandwidth control

With a management interface, organisations can manage their ISP connections, bandwidth and end user activity.

Administrators can reduce speeds for noncritical users or usage and increase bandwidth for users and applications that need it most. This can also help reduce or prevent any bandwidth abuse and ensure fair usage.

Effective bandwidth management ensures bandwidth is available for critical traffic and can be applied to any combination of according to application, service or end user. This ensures a smooth and consistent flow across the network at both peak and non-peak times.

Scalability to grow

Aggregating bandwidth is another benefit where Internet connections have reached their limitations. The UBM appliance allows the aggregation of any type of Internet connection of any ISP, performance and technology.

One key aspect of UBM for organisations is that the appliance can balance traffic across multiple WAN interfaces, so there is greater scalability as the organisation grows.

Internet redundancy

Unified Bandwidth Management also integrates Internet redundancy to ensure business continuity. The UBM will automatically provide Internet redundancy between each Internet connection so in the event of an Internet outage, the remaining active connections will ensure continuous Internet connectivity. Redundancy can also be provided for a particular ISP access outage and hardware failure.

Instant alerts are sent directly to the administrator in the event of an ISP failure for quicker notifications and problem resolution.

With failback, any lost connection can be replaced with no interruption to service.

Bandwidth Aggregation or Bandwidth Management

The purpose of Unified Bandwidth Management is to ensure a more efficient and effective use from your Internet connection and available bandwidth.

• Bandwidth Aggregation - This is the combining of 2 or more Internet connections to implement solutions such as Internet Load Balancing and Internet Bonding.
• Bandwidth Management - This is the control and management of how bandwidth flows in and out of the organisation network.

Both Bandwidth aggregation and management work better together then separately. Bandwidth management alone provides no reliability in the event of outage and no scalability, therefore if for example an organisation grows in number of users or increases bandwidth usage it will eventually reach its bandwidth limitations. Bandwidth aggregation alone on the other hand provides no efficient control over bandwidth capacity and therefore can contribute to congestion, high usage costs, bandwidth competition, and bandwidth abuse. When both are combined an organisation can achieve optimum Internet performance.

Effective bandwidth management ensures bandwidth is available for critical traffic and can be applied to any combination of according to application, service or end user. This ensures a smooth and consistent flow across the network at both peak and non-peak times. For example, bandwidth resources can be allocated to ensure that online payment services are always available to the organisations financial staff and greater access is provided during early hours when traffic is at its peak.

Another more specific example is allocating 20% of total bandwidth resources to the financial department and then specifying that 40% of this should be reserved for e-mail, 30% for Internet traffic and the remaining should be allocated to ‘default’. This guarantees that no single application is able to dominate an Internet connection.

It is also possible to further specify QoS policies which enable an application/service/end user to utilise bandwidth from another application/serice/end user if necessary. For example, VoIP traffic and Email traffic may have equal share of bandwidth of an Internet connection. However, if VoIP traffic uses its full bandwidth capacity and requires more a policy can be created for VoIP to utilise any unused bandwidth allocated to Email traffic (if any is available at the time).

End users are usually unaware that they have multiple applications and even other users competing for the use of their bandwidth. Browsing, VoIP, and email, etc. all manage and use bandwidth in the background which can lead to slowdowns. Bandwidth Management is designed to manage this traffic and to control and monitor the flow of traffic.