Intelligent Flow Delivery™

Congestion is unavoidable in IP networks and results in high delays, dropped connections, poor quality of experience (QoE), and overall user disappointment with their broadband service. Traffic peaks frequently exceed network capacity based on various factors such as mix and consumption behavior of differing applications. As noted in a recent issue of Business Week, with the dramatic growth in high-bandwidth, quality sensitive real-time entertainment applications such as streaming video, the challenges facing the Internet are formidable.  

Nonetheless, many network operators over-engineer capacity in transmission facilities in an attempt to mitigate congestion-induced performance problems. Purchasing excess capacity is obviously not an economically viable long-term strategy. A better solution is required that can be deployed transparently in today’s Internet infrastructure to manage disruptive IP congestion and enable optimum use of network bandwidth.

The Solution: Intelligent Flow Delivery (IFD)

IFD is an innovative form of Internet traffic management that takes a proactive approach to managing flows. Anagran’s IFD- based Internet traffic managers (ITMs) maintain vital state information on every flow while constantly measuring output load on each port, intelligently monitoring incoming traffic by flow class and managing just the right flows at just the right time to optimize the performance of TCP traffic as congestion escalates. Since traditional network equipment has no insight into flow state, packets normally get dropped across many and eventually all flows as congestion escalates. In essence, all traffic suffers including quality sensitive traffic such as video and voice. By monitoring traffic based on flow class, the Anagran ITMs can fully protect these vital video and voice services while constraining only those aggressive applications that are the primary contributors to congestion.

For TCP traffic, IFD ensures equitable use of network bandwidth for all traffic based on flow class. For UDP traffic, like streaming video and VoIP, IFD ensures constant flawless quality by automatically invoking Call Admission Control (CAC) whenever an incoming stream threatens the quality of existing streams.