October 7, 2007

Personal Bandwidth Manager - When Your Pipe Isn't Big Enough

What's your typical data stream like? Well let's see what mine might be like on a typical weekend.

Downloading a movie from Amazon.com, using Skype or some other service to talk on the phone, downloading email, taking a look at some videos on Youtube. Need I go on?

If you're cooking or reading a book these bandwidth intensive operations aren't a problem, but if you need to speak on the phone vi VOIP or need to have a file downloaded quickly then other things sucking your Internet connection's bandwidth are less of a priority.

There's a tool, now in beta, that can help. Propel Personal Bandwidth Manager.

This new tool from Propel Software Corporation allows you to prioritize what traffic is important and what traffic is not.

Propel PBM automatically optimizes and prioritizes network access for time-sensitive applications, improving the performance of VoIP, video calls, online games, and streaming media.

For example, a Skype call taken during a file upload can result in outgoing voice traffic suffering significant time delays or blockages as the two tasks compete for outgoing network bandwidth. The Skype traffic is higher priority because interfering with its packets can degrade the call quality. In contrast, the file upload is lower priority - the file transfer will not break if preference is given to the Skype traffic. An individual can try to protect high-priority networking applications like Skype from low-priority ones by turning them off manually, but this is often inconvenient and can waste time.

For those of you who have HUGE bandwidth options, a tool like this might not be needed. But for smaller businesses and individual professionals whose Internet connections might be under 1MB per second a tool like Personal Bandwidth Manager could be invaluable.

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