Network Tuning

This section describes a few ways that can be used to improve performance of a network.

• Active Queue Management (AQM) is a class of router mechanisms for improving perceived network performance by managing buffers intelligently.
  • Random Early Detection (RED) is an important example of an AQM strategy.
• Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) can be used with AQM-performing gateways to signal (light) congestion without dropping packets.
• Differentiated Services can be used to compose various kinds of service assurances and priority systems from simple building blocks
• Integrated Services is an earlier IETF framework for quality of service differentiation using per-flow reservations
• Sizing of router buffers presents a difficult optimization problem, trading off queuing delay against link utilization.
• Network proxies or so-called "WAN accelerators" is a way to speed up transmissions between sites without modifications to end hosts or protocols.
• Finally, some tuning hints specific to Cisco routers.

-- SimonLeinen - 01 Nov 2004 - 30 Mar 2006
-- PekkaSavola - 13 Jun 2008 (addition of WAN accelerators)