How to correctly implement traffic shaping for Metro-Ethernet providers WAN links in X690 ?

[Keith9]

Please see the article here from CenturyLink: https://www.centurylink.com/business/help/network/overview-of-traffic-shaping.html

Many telco's with a Metro-ethernet product suggest applying traffic shaping on the egress interface to mitigate issues with the carrier's policer dropping packets and causing TCP to drop off (creating a sawtooth like bandwidth graph profile).

What is the best way to do this on an X690 core licenced switch? Assuming you have Provider A coming into one port with a committed rate of 60mbps, and on that network are 3 other branch offices, each with 20mbps connections.

Then you have Provider B, which is a cable provider offering Metro-e, which maybe does not have the same requirements as applying traffic shaping? Say this comes into another port with a subscribed rate of 200mbps, and in that providers private cloud you have 4 other branch offices in different areas all at their own rates - which add up to the 200 at the HQ.

Would it be creating a pol file in VI and using an access-list on the switchport where the upstream WAN provider is plugged into?

Thanks!

[StephenW]

Keith,

Based on your post and the "sawtooth like bandwidth" graph, you are probably right. You are hitting limits in the ISP and they are dropping some traffic. This causes TCP windowing to start over due to dropped packets on the ISP.

So you can ether have your ISP decide what traffic to drop or you can decide on what traffic to drop. The sawtooth bandwidth could be fixed by enabling TX and RX flow-control in your network and configuring the committed rate on your side of the network. Our switches have RX enabled by default so you can enable TX. Note every device in the line needs to support TX and RX flow-control.

https://gtacknowledge.extremenetworks.com/articles/How_To/How-to-configure-basic-rate-limiting-on-a-port-for-ingress-and-egress/?q=rate+limit&l=en_US&fs=Search&pn=1