By Ben Puzzuoli, Director Sales & Marketing at DataDepositBox
March 14, 2016

Data Deposit Box Cloud Backup Expert Tips: Finding Bandwidth Throttling Balance in Cloud Backups

One of the biggest issues when it comes to backing up your data online is bandwidth; the greater the bandwidth at both user and vendor ends, the faster the feed of data can flow between the client’s digital devices and the cloud backup company’s servers. However, just like automobile traffic requires rules and regulations in order to keep things running smoothly on the highways and city streets, so too does cloud backup require the practice of bandwidth throttling in order to insure that all parties involved get the most consistent level of service possible.

In short, bandwidth throttling is when the flow of data is temporarily suspended or limited, either by the cloud backup service provider or the customer, in order to ensure that bandwidth is not used disproportionately by any one user or application, and that both compromises in quality of service and system crashes are avoided on both sides as well. This practice can be employed to control the flow of data, either over the Internet or across any local area network on either side. Thus, bandwidth throttling can indeed be utilized by either the user or the vendor of cloud data backup in order to keep data flowing at its utmost efficient rate.

When it comes to the cloud backup companies, bandwidth throttling is applied to the speed at which data can be read from or written to their servers. This practice can be implemented in two different ways, called “static” and “dynamic” bandwidth throttling. Static bandwidth throttling is used to control overall data flow parameters and create arbitrary rules when it comes to the rate at which data is transmitted to and from the cloud backup company’s servers. On the other hand, with dynamic bandwidth throttling the cloud backup company is able to decide how much bandwidth to give to specific clients or IP addresses, based on both the bandwidth limits that have been set up in order to keep everything flowing evenly and fairly for all subscribers of their online service, and the amount of bandwidth amount that said specific client has already used.

Indeed, the use of bandwidth throttling software on the cloud backup company’s servers ensures that bandwidth is distributed equally between all of their users, effectively guaranteeing that no one customer can overwhelm the system. This “policing software”, as it is sometimes called, uses a variety of different information when deciding how to keep everything balanced out, including the IP addresses of the clients and the source and destination port numbers at both ends of the service. If bandwidth usage is at peak levels and one or more particular users of the cloud backup service have used up a disproportionate amount of said bandwidth, limits will then be applied, only to be released when either another user takes their place in regards to using the most bandwidth, or the period of peak traffic itself subsides.

In addition to this, bandwidth throttling can be applied differently to certain sorts of data transmission, giving one kind of process priority over the other. An example of this is the fact that limiting the speed with which clients can access their data on the cloud backup company’s servers makes a lot more sense than limiting the speed with which customers can write data to said servers, inasmuch that protecting the customer from data loss by backing up, should be given a higher priority than that of the speed with which the user can get their data back in the event of data loss. In this situation, bandwidth throttling is able to prioritize which sorts of actions are the most crucial, ensuring a higher level of service for all users of cloud backup.

Bandwidth throttling can also be implemented and controlled by the customers of online backup as well. Using special software provided by the cloud backup company, administrators of company servers can control the amount of bandwidth being used for backing up by each computer on the network, thus making sure that, for instance, the most important computers receive priority when it comes to bandwidth. In addition to this, client software can also bring about bandwidth throttling within any individual computer that is being backed up as well, by regulating either the buffer amount or the speed of transfer that is being used. This application can be especially useful when wanting to ensure that the practice of ongoing data backup between the computer in question and the cloud backup servers does not compromise either the performance of the computer itself, or its ability to effectively access to the Internet.

Here at Data Deposit Box, we believe that the best cloud backup solution for your business is the one that is the least complicated and easiest to use. For this reason, we have designed advanced client software that, once installed on your computers and servers, allows you to let us control your bandwidth throttling if you wish so you don’t have to. Our software automatically senses when backups should slow down or temporarily cease to allow for system resources to be allocated toward other important aspects of your business, only resuming backup transmission at the regular rate once user activity has lessened. In this way, we prioritize not only the backup of your business’s data, but also the keeping of your business’s “bandwidth” of productivity consistent as well.

About the Author: Ben Puzzuoli is Director of Sales & Marketing at DataDepositBox, a Toronto based cloud data backup service provider, which is listed at both the Toronto and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges. DataDepositBox technologies and solutions are currently used daily by over 200,000 customers, 1,000 resellers, 25 MSPs and private label partners for online backup and recovery, archiving, disaster readiness, secure file sharing and remote access. Visit DDB website here: www.DataDepositBox.com

 

 

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