Contributors to bandwidth requirements

NFM-P GUI clients

The bandwidth specifications provided above for NFM-P GUI clients are based on the fact that information about changes in the network is forwarded to the NFM-P GUI clients. The NFM-P client updates the information visible to the user based on recent changes in the network.

A few examples of network changes which will be reported to the NFM-P include status changes of physical equipment, status changes of Layer 2 or Layer 3 interfaces, configuration of network elements, provisioning of new equipment or services, status changes in services or any attributes thereof, and configuration changes of routing protocols.

In situations where the frequency of changes sent to the NFM-P GUI is significant and exceeds the bandwidth specification, the performance of the NFM-P client will degrade, and there is a possibility that the connection to the server will be dropped. An NFM-P GUI restart will be required to reconnect to the server to receive change notifications.

NFM-P GUI clients on X displays

NFM-P GUI clients can be displayed remotely on terminals using the X11 protocol for graphical displays. In these cases, it is important to ensure that the bandwidth availability between the station running the NFM-P client and the host displaying the NFM-P client is at least 1024 Kbps. Also, it is important to ensure that the round-trip network latency between these two hosts is quite low (20-30 ms). To achieve acceptable performance on bandwidth limited links, X-compression should be used, by using the ssh -XC command. If compression is not used, it is recommended that the minimum bandwidth is higher than 1024 Kbps. Situations where the available bandwidth is lower or the network latency is higher will result in the poor usability of the NFM-P GUI client. A bandwidth of 1024 Kbps will impact the GUI start time and will not meet the published time of less than 2 minutes.

Additional bandwidth may be required to support the network elements described in Network element specific requirements

Note that the NFM-P GUI client startup may be impacted when using minimum bandwidth links.

XML API clients

The two main factors affecting the bandwidth requirements between the NFM-P server and an XML API client are the following:

design and behavior of the application using the XML API interface
rate of changes in the network

Applications which listen to network changes via the JMS interface provided by the NFM-P XML API or applications which retrieve large pieces of information via the API, such as statistics information or network inventory information, require access to a dedicated bandwidth from the machine hosting the application to the NFM-P server according to the tables provided above. Applications which do not require real-time event and alarm notifications may operate with acceptable performance when the bandwidth between the machine hosting the application and the NFM-P server is less than the quantity specified in the tables above.

It is a best practice to minimize event and alarm notifications using a JMS filter to reduce bandwidth requirements and the possible effects of network latency.

In an environment where network changes are infrequent, it is possible to successfully operate an application using the API when the bandwidth between the machine hosting this application and the NFM-P server is less than the quantity specified in the tables above, possibly as little as 128 Kbps. However, in situations where the frequency of network changes increases, the performance or responsiveness of the application will degrade.

NFM-P auxiliary statistics collector

The main factors impacting communication to and from the NFM-P auxiliary statistics collector are the following:

Number of performance statistics being collected. The NFM-P server needs to tell the NFM-P auxiliary statistics collector which statistics to collect every interval.
Number of statistics collected from the network elements.
Number of statistics written to the database.

The more performance statistics are collected, the more significant the bandwidth utilization between the NFM-P server and the NFM-P auxiliary statistics collector. Similarly, this requires more significant bandwidth utilization between the NFM-P auxiliary statistics collector and the NFM-P database stations. The bandwidth requirements are not dependent on the network activity.

NSP Flow Collector and Flow Collector Controller

The main factors impacting communication to and from the NSP Flow Collector are the following:

size of the NFM-P managed network for the network extraction
size of generated IPDR files
number of network elements sending cflowd records

The main factors impacting communication to and from the NSP Flow Collector Controller are the following:

size of the NFM-P managed network for the network extraction
number of NSP Flow Collectors connected to the NSP Flow Collector Controller

Table 4-8: Additional bandwidth requirements for the NSP Flow Collector

Bandwidth requirements for an NSP Flow Collector	Bandwidth usage characterization
NSP Flow Collector Controller to an NSP Flow Collector This is for Network Snapshot Transfer (FTP/SFTP). By default, this operation should only occur weekly if the NFM-P server and the NSP Flow Collector Controller remain in sync. The amount of bandwidth required is dependent on the network size.	Bandwidth requirement will depend upon the network size, which determines the network extraction file size, and the desired time to complete the file transfer from the NSP Flow Collector Controller to the NSP Flow Collector.
Managed Network to the NSP Flow Collector In the case of redundant NSP Flow Collectors, the amount of dedicated bandwidth is required for each NSP Flow Collector.	40 Mbps per 20 000 flows per second
NSP Flow Collector to the IPDR file storage server Approximate amount of Stats per a 1 MB IPDR Stats File: 2,560 TCP PERF statistics (all counters) or 3,174 RTP statistics (all counters) or 9,318 Comprehensive statistics (all counters) or 9,830 Volume statistics (all counters). In the case of redundant NSP Flow Collectors, the amount of dedicated bandwidth calculated on the right is for each NSP Flow Collector to the station where IPDR files are being transferred.	Use the information on the left to calculate the amount of data generated for the expected statistics and to calculate the time to transfer at a given bandwidth. The total time must be less than 50% of the collection interval. For example, if 1 GB of IPDR files is expected per interval, and the collection interval is 5 minutes, a 45 Mbps connection will take 3minuntes and 2 seconds to transfer. This is more than 50% and a larger network connection is required.

Bandwidth requirements for an NSP Flow Collector

Bandwidth usage characterization

NSP Flow Collector Controller to an NSP Flow Collector

This is for Network Snapshot Transfer (FTP/SFTP). By default, this operation should only occur weekly if the NFM-P server and the NSP Flow Collector Controller remain in sync. The amount of bandwidth required is dependent on the network size.

Bandwidth requirement will depend upon the network size, which determines the network extraction file size, and the desired time to complete the file transfer from the NSP Flow Collector Controller to the NSP Flow Collector.

Managed Network to the NSP Flow Collector

In the case of redundant NSP Flow Collectors, the amount of dedicated bandwidth is required for each NSP Flow Collector.

40 Mbps per 20 000 flows per second

NSP Flow Collector to the IPDR file storage server

Approximate amount of Stats per a 1 MB IPDR Stats File: 2,560 TCP PERF statistics (all counters) or 3,174 RTP statistics (all counters) or 9,318 Comprehensive statistics (all counters) or 9,830 Volume statistics (all counters). In the case of redundant NSP Flow Collectors, the amount of dedicated bandwidth calculated on the right is for each NSP Flow Collector to the station where IPDR files are being transferred.

Use the information on the left to calculate the amount of data generated for the expected statistics and to calculate the time to transfer at a given bandwidth. The total time must be less than 50% of the collection interval. For example, if 1 GB of IPDR files is expected per interval, and the collection interval is 5 minutes, a 45 Mbps connection will take 3minuntes and 2 seconds to transfer. This is more than 50% and a larger network connection is required.

Table 4-9: Additional bandwidth requirements for the NSP Flow Collector Controller

Bandwidth requirements for the NSP Flow Collector Controller	Bandwidth usage characterization
NFM-P server to an NSP Flow Collector Controller This is for Network Snapshot Transfer (FTP/SFTP). By default, this operation should only occur weekly if the NFM-P server and NSP Flow Collector remain in sync. The amount of bandwidth required is dependent on the network size.	Bandwidth requirement will depend upon the network size, which determines the network extraction file size, and the desired time to complete the file transfer from the NFM-P server to the NSP Flow Collector Controller.

Bandwidth requirements for the NSP Flow Collector Controller

Bandwidth usage characterization

NFM-P server to an NSP Flow Collector Controller

This is for Network Snapshot Transfer (FTP/SFTP). By default, this operation should only occur weekly if the NFM-P server and NSP Flow Collector remain in sync. The amount of bandwidth required is dependent on the network size.

Bandwidth requirement will depend upon the network size, which determines the network extraction file size, and the desired time to complete the file transfer from the NFM-P server to the NSP Flow Collector Controller.