Traffic Shaping in Linux: Efficient Network Management for Improved Performance

Introduction: In today's fast-paced digital world, efficient network management is crucial for ensuring optimal performance and a smooth user experience. Traffic shaping is a technique used to control and prioritize network traffic, allowing administrators to allocate bandwidth effectively. In this article, we will explore the concept of traffic shaping and its significance in the Linux environment. We will also provide practical examples and commands adapted for Linux users.

Examples: Example 1: Limiting Bandwidth for a Specific Network Interface To limit the bandwidth for a specific network interface, we can use the 'tc' command in Linux. Let's say we want to limit the bandwidth to 1 Mbps for the eth0 interface. We can achieve this with the following command:

sudo tc qdisc add dev eth0 root tbf rate 1mbit burst 10kb latency 70ms

Example 2: Prioritizing Traffic with Different Classes We can prioritize traffic by assigning different classes to network packets. For instance, let's prioritize VoIP traffic over web browsing traffic. We can create two classes, 'voip' and 'default', and assign different priorities to them. The following commands demonstrate this:

sudo tc qdisc add dev eth0 root handle 1: htb default 10
sudo tc class add dev eth0 parent 1: classid 1:1 htb rate 100mbit ceil 100mbit
sudo tc class add dev eth0 parent 1:1 classid 1:10 htb rate 20mbit ceil 20mbit prio 0
sudo tc class add dev eth0 parent 1:1 classid 1:20 htb rate 80mbit ceil 80mbit prio 1
sudo tc filter add dev eth0 parent 1: protocol ip prio 1 u32 match ip dport 5060 0xffff flowid 1:10