Measures reported by PsPartDataTest

A partition manages bandwidth for a traffic class' aggregate flows, so that all of the flows for the class are controlled together as one.

Partitions can be used to:

• Protect mission-critical traffic by guaranteeing that a traffic class always gets a defined amount of bandwidth

• Limit aggressive, non-critical traffic by allowing that traffic class to consume only a defined amount of bandwidth

• Divide capacity

• Assign bandwidth dynamically to users

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There are two types of partitions that can be created: static or dynamic.

A static partition manages bandwidth for all flows within a particular traffic class. Static partitions can be fixed or burstable.

• A fixed partition allows an aggregate traffic class to use a defined amount of bandwidth, if needed. A fixed partition not only ensures that a specific amount of bandwidth will be available, but it also limits traffic to that same level.

• A burstable partition allows an aggregate traffic class to use a defined amount of bandwidth, and also allows that traffic class to access additional unused bandwidth, if needed. You can put a cap on a burstable partition, allowing it to access upto a maximum amount of bandwidth, or you can allow a burstable partition potentially to consume all available bandwidth.

In situations where administrators may want to apply bandwidth limits to individual users, they can establish dynamic sub partitions for the traffic class. A dynamic partition carves up a static partition's bandwidth, creating sub partitions on the fly for new users. Subpartitions are children of a static partition.

Partitions protect traffic by guaranteeing a defined amount of bandwidth for mission-critical traffic classes. If the traffic to a partition is gradually increasing or if suddenly administrators notice too much of data/packet drops on a partition, then, the traffic flow to the traffic class may be disrupted. This may lead to attacks on the servers/devices that are connected to the load balancers. To avoid such abnormalities, administrators may often need to monitor the partitions round the clock. The PsPartDataTest test helps administrators in this regard!

This test auto-discovers the partitions that are available in the target PacketShaper load balancer and reports how well data were transmitted by each partition. Administrators can capture data that were dropped and figure out how frequently data were retransmitted. This way, problematic partitions on which frequent datadrops were noticed can be

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each partition configured on the target PacketShaper Load Balancer that is to be monitored.

The measures made by this test are as follows: