Actiontec MI424WR User Guide - Page 158

Appendix A Quality of Service Traffic Shaping Traffic Shaping is the solution for managing and avoiding congestion where the network meets limited broadband bandwidth. Typical networks use a 100 Mbps Ethernet LAN with a 100 Mbps WAN interface router. This is where most bottlenecks occur A traffic shaper is essentially a regulated queue that accepts uneven and/or bursty flows of packets and transmits them in a steady, predictable stream so that the network is not overwhelmed with traffic. While traffic priority allows basic prioritization of packets, traffic shaping provides more sophisticated definitions, such as: • Bandwidth limit for each device • Bandwidth limit for classes of rules • Prioritization policy • TCP serialization on a device Additionally, QoS traffic shaping rules can be defined for a default device. These rules will be used on a device that has no definitions of its own. This enables the definition of QoS rules on the default WAN, for example, and their maintenance even if the PPP or bridge device over the WAN is removed. Device Traffic Shaping This section describes the different Traffic Shaping screens and terms, and presents the feature's configuration logic. 1. Click Quality of Service at the top of the Home screen, then click Traffic Shaping. The following screen appears. 155