FloodGate-1 uses weighted priorities to allocate available bandwidth based on relative merit or importance, without starvation. When using weighted priorities, each class of traffic is given a weight that is relative to all other weights defined in the management policy. The weights define the basis upon which traffic competes for available bandwidth. For example, Web traffic can be assigned a weighted priority of 60, and SMTP traffic can be given a weight of 20. FloodGate-1 allows an unlimited number of priorities to be set so that even the lowest priority traffic receives a portion of the available bandwidth.
Weighted priorities provide the only means to prioritize traffic and prevent starvation.
As explained previously, absolute priorities should not be used because they cause bandwidth starvation and block traffic. If a bandwidth management product lacks weighted priorities, the only available method to allocate bandwidth is via guarantees. Unfortunately, bandwidth guarantees are an impractical solution because they can only be used to meet worst case traffic conditions. For example, if an organization is supporting 100 users they must plan for the worst case situation in which every user is simultaneously vying for network bandwidth. If guarantees were set to account for only 50 concurrent users, then the 51 st user would be denied bandwidth and their connection would be blocked.