Bandwidth management for the people

Abstract

In the context of a rapidly growing broadband market, it is critical to understand the expectations and quality of service requirements of a changing population of end users, in order to make informed strategic decisions. Although a number of technologies are available to fine-tune bandwidth allocation and ensure various forms of ‘fairness’, the performance, cost and marketing implications of choosing one regime over another are not always obvious to decision-makers. In this paper, we present the broadband broker (B-Cube) simulation tool and demonstrate how it can be used as a strategic planning tool to identify and evaluate the advantages and shortcomings of a wide variety of broadband products, bandwidth management schemes or changes in usage patterns. The main difference between B-Cube and other tools is that using it only requires an understanding of the top-level principles governing the distribution of the limited broadband resource.