Bandwidth management provides a convenient way to manage the use of various services on the network. It manages general protocols (for example, HTTP and FTP) and applies traffic prioritization to enhance the performance of delay-sensitive applications like voice and video.

Use the BWM screens to control bandwidth for services passing through the Zyxel Device, and to identify the conditions that define the bandwidth control.

When you allow a service, you can restrict the bandwidth it uses. It controls TCP and UDP traffic. Use policy routes to manage other types of traffic (like ICMP).

If you want to use a service, make sure both the security policy allow the service’s packets to go through the Zyxel Device.

Bandwidth management examines every TCP and UDP connection passing through the Zyxel Device. Then, you can specify, by port, whether or not the Zyxel Device continues to route the connection.

You can limit an application’s upload or download bandwidth. This limit keeps the traffic from using up too much of the upload interface’s bandwidth. This way you can make sure there is bandwidth for other applications. When you apply a bandwidth limit to upload or download traffic, each member of the upload zone can send up to the limit. Take a LAN to WAN policy for example.

In the following table the configured rates total less than the available bandwidth and maximize bandwidth usage is disabled, both servers get their configured rate.

Server A has a configured rate that equals the total amount of available bandwidth and a higher priority. You should regard extreme over allotment of traffic with different priorities (as shown here) as a configuration error. Even though the Zyxel Device still attempts to let all traffic get through and not be lost, regardless of its priority, server B gets almost no bandwidth with this configuration.

If you want to limit the bandwidth for a specific VLAN, set the VLAN as the incoming interface and VPN as the outgoing interface. Then, set the bandwidth limit for this BWM rule.

The Bandwidth management screens control the bandwidth allocation for TCP and UDP traffic. You can use incoming interface, outgoing interface, user, source, destination information, application, and service type as criteria to create a sequence of specific conditions, similar to the sequence of rules used by firewalls, to specify how the Zyxel Device allocates bandwidth for the matching packets.

This screen allows you to enable/disable bandwidth management and add, edit, and remove user-defined bandwidth management policies.The default bandwidth management policy is the one with the priority of “default”. It is the last policy the Zyxel Device checks if traffic does not match any other bandwidth management policies you have configured. You cannot remove, activate, deactivate or move the default bandwidth management policy.

The Network > BWM > Add/Edit screen allows you to create a new condition or edit an existing one.

 

The first BWM policy is the default and can only be edited.

The following table describes the labels in this screen.

Objects are parameters to which the Policy rules are built upon. You can add/edit User and Address objects for the BWM policy.

The following table describes the fields in the above screen.

The following table describes the fields in the above screen.

The following table describes the fields in the above screen.

The following table describes the fields in the above screen.

You are a client on the Zyxel Device LAN. You use Teams to communicate with your colleagues and have video meetings often at work. You want to create a bandwidth management rule to prioritize traffic for Teams so that you can always use Teams without any delay.

This example uses the parameters given below.