Interface Bandwidth

This section describes interface bandwidth settings. You can set bandwidth for both upstream and downstream traffic on FW interfaces.

When the FW functions as an enterprise egress gateway, the bandwidth that the enterprise purchases from the carrier is generally less than the physical bandwidth capacity of the FW outbound interface. If the maximum available bandwidth is not set on the outbound interface, the bandwidth required by traffic may exceed the available bandwidth on the outbound interface. As a result, traffic congestion occurs, and packets may be discarded.

You can set the maximum outbound bandwidth to a value less than or equal to the bandwidth purchased by the enterprise. If the traffic exceeds the maximum available bandwidth on the outbound interface, the FW considers that traffic congestion occurs and uses the queue scheduling mechanism to ensure that packets with higher priorities are forwarded preferentially.

The FW supports bandwidth management through hardware chips. In this case, traffic shaping is used to limit the bandwidth of outbound interfaces. For details about traffic shaping, see Traffic Shaping and Traffic Policing.

You can also set the maximum upstream bandwidth so that the FW only accepts traffic whose bandwidth is lower than or equal to the specified bandwidth and discards traffic whose bandwidth is higher than the specified bandwidth.

For details on how to configure interface bandwidth, see Interfaces.