Bandwidth Gauges - Bandwidth Meters

Bandwidth is one of the most used terms in the technology world. Bandwidth is essentially the capacity of a given network. It’s defined as the maximum amount of data that could hypothetically be transferred from a source at a given time. It’s a theoretical amount—not a measure of the actual amount of data being transferred.

Bandwidth exists in both physical and wireless communication networks. More specifically, it’s the bit-rate measure of transmission capacity over a network communication system. Efficient communication and transmission depend on having similar data rates at both ends. Otherwise, there will be delays in communication when data is sent from a source with one data rate to a destination with a different data rate.

Though seemingly straightforward, bandwidth is often mistaken for other key concepts like speed, latency, and throughput. To understand bandwidth, you need to understand the distinctions between the following concepts:

Bandwidth vs. Throughput: The difference between throughput and bandwidth is the difference between the real and the theoretical. Throughput tells you how much information was transferred in a certain amount of time, while bandwidth is how much could hypothetically be transferred. Bandwidth represents the maximum amount of data that could be transferred, while throughput is how much of the data makes it to the destination, taking factors like latency, packet loss, network speed, and more into account.

Bandwidth vs. Latency: Latency, sometimes referred to as ping rate or delay, is the lag you experience when you’re waiting for something to load. If bandwidth is defined as the amount of information that can be sent per second, latency represents the amount of time it takes for information to get to you from its source.

Bandwidth vs. Speed: Bandwidth is a measure of the amount of information you can receive every second. Speed represents how quickly information is received and downloaded. In short, speed is a measure of time while bandwidth is a measure of volume.

A bandwidth meter, also called a bandwidth gauge, is a tool built to visually represent key information about bandwidth within a network. A bandwidth meter tool can track and report on internet usage on devices and displays bandwidth statistics in real-time for data being received and transmitted for a remote network device.

By displaying both current and historical bandwidth data, a bandwidth meter can help engineers get a better grasp of bandwidth usage within their organization’s network. They can also use the information to inform their understanding of network performance and troubleshoot issues as they arise. This is particularly important if an engineer is trying to troubleshoot a slow network.

Bandwidth meters, or bandwidth gauges, can be deployed across multiple interfaces when using the right bandwidth meter tool. If SNMP communication is enabled on your devices and those devices support MIB-II, then you can monitor bandwidth usage on those devices. When you use the right bandwidth meter tool, you can run multiple bandwidth gauges and monitor multiple interfaces at the same time. This can help you assess load distribution to make sure you make the most of your bandwidth and aren’t creating bottlenecks.

When it comes to bandwidth and maintaining performance, the key factor to keep in mind is usage. That’s why the best bandwidth meters, like the bandwidth gauge in SolarWinds Engineers Toolset, can make it easier to see if usage is in the warning zone, or if your loads are balanced.

The purpose of the bandwidth gauge is to display bandwidth statistics in real time for data being received and transmitted for remote network devices. Bandwidth is a critical metric, so instead of overwhelming engineers with unrelated metrics, the bandwidth gauge creates clear visual displays of bandwidth usage in graphs and charts.

In essence, bandwidth meters offer real-time traffic monitoring. They monitor the use and amount of data transmitted or received by remote network devices by using SNMP to communicate and gather traffic statistics. The tools display this received and transmitted data either in bits per second or in transmitted and received percent utilization for each interface or port. With quality bandwidth meters, you can see historical data in graphs or charts and get insight into the current data in the form of tables displayed below the meters.

A bandwidth meter can help you improve performance by offering insight into usage, allowing you to make more informed decisions about adjusting usage to ensure you’re making the most of your existing bandwidth. Improving bandwidth usage can include everything from rebalancing loads to identifying and addressing bandwidth hogs. A bandwidth gauge can tell you when bandwidth usage is approaching warning or critical levels, so you know exactly when and where you need to act to avoid an emergency.

Some of the useful features of a quality bandwidth meter, like the one included in SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset, include:

• The ability to gain insight on real-time traffic load on any device on any remote network and being able to compare current data with historic data on bandwidth usage.
• The power to run multiple instances of Bandwidth Gauges in parallel to assess load distribution.
• The capacity to monitor any interface or subinterface of a frame relay.

With a bandwidth meter tool, you can set up different bandwidth gauges to be run on multiple interfaces and select and associate different styles of gauges with different devices. For example, routers can appear as one type of gauge and servers can be defined to appear as a different gauge. You can even save your layouts to quickly load a list of monitored interfaces/ports.

With these bandwidth meters in place, engineers are better equipped to keep an eye on bandwidth usage across their networks. This can help you make sure you make the most of your existing bandwidth and can help you see whether network issues like speed or throughput problems are tied to bandwidth problems or not, supporting faster troubleshooting.

There are many benefits to using a bandwidth meter. It can help engineers boost network performance and prevent delays and latency and help organizations save money because often what seems like a problem with lacking bandwidth may really be a problem with load balancing. By using a bandwidth gauge, you can identify if the underlying problem affecting performance is a lack of bandwidth, or if it’s related to bandwidth hogs, load balancing, or a problem only indirectly related to bandwidth. Without identifying the cause of the issue, an organization may find itself spending money on more bandwidth without solving the underlying problem.

Creating bandwidth gauges is built to be simple using SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset. All you need to monitor bandwidth usage with a bandwidth meter is to have enabled SNMP communication on your devices, and your devices need to support MIB-II. The number of gauges is determined by the memory on the computer with the software installed on it. The steps to creating a bandwidth gauge are:

1. Click Gauges, then select New Gauge.
2. Specify the device hostname or IP address.
3. Select to use SNMPv3 credentials or a community string, then click Next.
4. Select discovered ports or interfaces, then click Next.
5. Specify your own speed or confirm the automatically discovered speed is correct. You can specify different speeds for transmit and receive as needed. The bandwidth gauge will use the port speeds to calculate percent utilization of the interface and define the upper scale of the gauge.
6. Select either 64-bit or 32-bit traffic counters.
7. Finally, click Finish.

As soon as a bandwidth gauge is created, it measures a baseline. From there, it immediately starts monitoring bandwidth usage. Real-time utilization is based on the number of octets received or transmitted through an interface over the last few seconds. The bandwidth gauge polls the remote interface about once every fifteen seconds by default and calculates the average bits per second since the most recent poll. With a bandwidth meter tool, you can select any interface or even subinterface of a frame relay to monitor.

Once you have defined a set of gauges, you can save their configuration as a file you can load at any time, so you don’t need to keep redefining them whenever you need them.

SolarWinds Engineers Toolset (ETS) comes with more than sixty tools designed to help engineers with the many varied tasks they need to engage in to keep the network and infrastructure up and running. In addition to the Bandwidth Gauge, ETS comes with a wide array of tools to help with everything from network discovery and monitoring to analysis and problem solving, and much more. After all, bandwidth usage is just one of the key network elements with a major impact on network performance.

Some of the other tools included in Engineer’s Toolset are:

• MAC Address Finder
• Interface Monitor
• Network Traffic Generator
• DNS Analyzer
• Memory Monitor
• WMI Browser
• Traceroute
• Syslog Server
• Port Scanner
• Subnet List
• IP Network Browser
• Ping Sweep
• SNMP Sweep
• Network Discovery Tool
• Network Sonar
• Switch Port Mapper
• Wake-on-LAN tool

To learn more about other tools included in Engineer’s Toolset, check out this page.