Broadband traffic management is the strategy of regulating and controlling customer or network traffic according to static or dynamic rules, usually capping the fastest upload and download speeds. Internet service providers employ this as a best practice to guarantee a constant level of service quality and customer experience. In simple terms, to reduce overuse and network congestion, broadband traffic management is often implemented during busy times and peak hours. In this post, you’ll be reading about the evolution of broadband traffic management. Keep reading if this topic concerns you!
Why You Should Learn About the Evolution
Let’s begin with the basic question- why you must understand evolution? A network soon experiences poor Internet access as links become overcrowded. Traffic management has grown in importance as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) strive to offer their customers the greatest internet experience.
It’s quite known that by enabling constant speeds for everyone, regardless of usage or activities, traffic management offers users a consistent service. Speeds do not fluctuate depending on demand; they remain constant for everyone. So, since we all benefit when it’s about understanding broadband traffic and proper management, it becomes necessary how it all started.
The Origin of Broadband Traffic Management
The online world was a relatively new technology in 2006, and lots of people were eager to use it. ISPs were clamouring to keep up with the rising demand, and business was growing in general. BitTorrent gained popularity about the same time as ISPs started adding lots of new users to their networks. The volume of BitTorrent traffic quickly grew to the point where it was interfering with network traffic from sources other than BitTorrent. Links, cable modems, and backhauls filled up, as a result, giving BitTorrent users and non-BitTorrent users equally a bad experience.
Network administrators realized that they needed to regulate subscribers’ BitTorrent usage after noticing the underwhelming performance of their networks. As a result, network managers looked for a solution to manage the programs that were used there.
As a result, network administrators gave birth to a brand-new sector of the industry called application-specific traffic management. While restricting connections across a network was the initial focus of application management, the idea of imposing control over applications across networks would later give rise to contemporary challenges like the Comcast Corp. v. FCC case and the Net Neutrality campaign.
Broadband Traffic Management: Turning Point
Edward Snowden revealed widespread internet traffic surveillance in 2013 when he published thousands of classified documents from the US government. Additionally, these records showed that data transmission within data centers was not secured, allowing for the tapping of the fibers connecting data centers.
As a result, Snowden’s release inspired IT firms and the online community to develop new protocols and encrypt all data, regardless of how unimportant. Hence, it is becoming increasingly challenging to correctly identify the application that each packet belongs to.
Bottom Line
In the modern world, the amount of internet traffic that can be identified is dwindling while the complexity needed to do so is rising. As was previously mentioned, network latency can increase dramatically when network links are used at more than 80% of their potential. Subscriptions thus have a poor quality of experience.
The goal of trying to regulate network traffic in the past has always been to keep it below connection saturation. However, what if, when links are getting close to saturation, we simply improve the subscriber experience rather than implementing a series of ever-more-complex regulations to attempt and regulate network traffic? Application-based traffic management serves this purpose. Businesses can benefit from a variety of broadband traffic control tools in the same way, for instance, by using broadband network traffic bandwidth monitor that can help in navigating the broadband network traffic in order to ease congestion and proactively work on broadband network traffic management.
