NETWORK TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
First Claim
1. A bandwidth manager comprising a computing environment that includes a central processing unit, volatile storage, non-volatile storage, a network interface, interconnected by a bus;
- said computing environment configured to an operating system;
said computing environment configured to maintain data representative of a network;
said network having a plurality of zones and at least one zone transit point interconnecting each of said zones;
said data representative of said network comprising an identification of each of said zones and each of said zone transit points and a bandwidth capacity of each of said zone transit points.
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Accused Products
Abstract
One aspect of the specification is the use of a virtual entity to represent the bandwidth bottleneck point in a network. Areas of the network where bandwidth does not need to be managed can be modeled as zones. This model enables more flexibility as the virtual bottleneck point can represent a collection of components (e.g. routers), or a portion of a real component (e.g. a router could be represented by multiple virtual bottleneck points with different purposes.) This model can also allow a user to decide which points in their network should be managed, independent of the underlying data network infrastructure. These virtual entities can be placed between areas of the network, and configured with specific policies. Bandwidth usage across these virtual entities can be tracked and compared to the configured bandwidth limit available to the application at each bottleneck point. When the bandwidth available at the bottleneck point is fully utilized, additional calls can be blocked or rerouted. Policies can be applied to permit certain calls to proceed despite the fact that bandwidth is fully utilized, or to block certain calls when bandwidth usage is approaching the maximum level. Bandwidth management can be distributed or centralized with information shared throughout a distributed network.
73 Citations
12 Claims
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1. A bandwidth manager comprising a computing environment that includes a central processing unit, volatile storage, non-volatile storage, a network interface, interconnected by a bus;
- said computing environment configured to an operating system;
said computing environment configured to maintain data representative of a network;
said network having a plurality of zones and at least one zone transit point interconnecting each of said zones;
said data representative of said network comprising an identification of each of said zones and each of said zone transit points and a bandwidth capacity of each of said zone transit points. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
- said computing environment configured to an operating system;
Specification