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Last Update: May 31st, 2016

ET/BWMGR v5 Tutorial

This document illustrates now to create rules to achieve the most common tasks in ET/BWMGR. When you learn to use a new, complicated product, start simple. Don't try to do complicated things before you understand the simple things.

Add A Rule

First I'll add a "global" rule to gather stats for the entire interface. This can be used to tell you how much traffic is being processed by the system.

You need to check In and Out for all bi-directional rules; I'll give it a name for reference and check Stats and Global. Global means that the rule will always match if it's true, even if there is another rule before it in the ruleset. With no match parameters, all traffic will match the rule.

Addrule 1

Note the graph icon displayed at the end of the rule. This is a link to a graph for the rule.

Addrule 2

There's also a comment icon. Rules added after initial boot get a comment indicating when they were added. When you start automating adding rules these comments can be very useful in determining how an unrecognized rule may have been added.

Addrule comment

Sections

Sections can be used to organize your rules. Once you have a lot of rule, finding or adding new rules can be confusing. Sections allow you to set a range or rule numbers. First, we'll just add a section. Our next rule will show how to use it.

Addsection 1

Addsection 2

Adding a Bandwidth Control Rule

I've set up 3 simple profiles for demonstration. Profile "Default" is 3Mb/s, plus there's one for 1Mb/s and 2Mb/s which we'll use later when illustrating tiering.

Profiles 1

Now to add a simple bandwidth control rule. While this rule may seem overly simplistic, it's actually all you need to do in a tiered environment where an ISP or School provides raw bandwidth.

Addrule 3

The name of the rule is the company name "Acme" and stats are enabled. The rule has an address of 10.1.1.1 with the Default bandwidth profile and it's being added to section "Customers".

Addrule 4

Sections can be used instead of manually assigning rule indexes so that you don't have to "know" the index structure when you add a rule. This is particularly useful when adding rules via an application or an automated script.

Creating a Group

Groups are "containers"; rules within a group can have their own rules, but they are also dictated by the rules of the container. This can create some complicated dynamics when use more complex features (like bursting), but they're quite simple for basic bandwidth control.

First, the group declaration must be before the rules, so I've added a section for Groups before the customer rules at index 3000. I'll put my group definitions under here to guarantee that they are easy to find and before the rules that populate the groups.

Next, I create a group named GroupA with a bandwidth limit of 5Mb/s.

Firstgroup

I'm going to add another section named GroupA_Members to further organize. And then add a member to the group:

Groupa member

I'll also add a few more members, because a group with just 1 member isn't much of a group.

Groupa member

Comment Policy Add Comment

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