Features; Pipes - D-Link DFL-1600 User Manual

23.2. Pipes

23.1.2

Features

The traffic shaper in D-Link firewalls has the following key features:
Pipe based
Traffic shaping in D-Link firewalls is handled by a concept based on
"pipes", where each pipe has several prioritizing, limiting and
grouping possibilities. Individual pipes may be chained in different
ways to construct bandwidth management units that far exceed the
capabilities of one single pipe.
Traffic prioritizing and bandwidth limiting
Every pipe contains a number of priority levels, each with its own
bandwidth limit, specified in kilobits per second. Limits may also be
specified for the total of the pipe.
Grouping
Traffic through a pipe can be automatically grouped into "pipe
users", where each pipe user can be configured to the same extent as
the main pipe. A group is specified with respect to a number of
parameters, for instance, source or destination IP network, IP address
or port number.
Dynamic bandwidth balancing
The traffic shaper can be used to dynamically balance the bandwidth
allocation of different pipe groups if the pipe as a whole has exceeded
its limits. This means that available bandwidth is evenly balanced
with respect to the grouping for the pipe.
Pipe chaining
When pipes are assigned to pipe rules, up to eight pipes may be
concatenated to form a chain. This permits filtering and limiting to
be handled in a very sophisticated manner.
Traffic guarantees
With the proper pipe configuration, the traffic shaping may be used
to guarantee bandwidth (and thereby quality) for traffic through the
firewall.
A closer look into these features are given in the sections next.
23.2 Pipes
A Pipe is a central concept in the traffic shaping functionality of D-Link
firewalls and is the base for all bandwidth control. Pipes are fairly
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