[itsisgreat]

I posted this on the old forum, but never really got a solid response. Does anyone have any recommendations on good bandwidth shaping appliances? We're having some issues with music and movie downloads clogging up the network. Thanks.

[grover]

We've been using netequalizer on our network. It's done the job and is affordable.

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Can you further elaborate on your network? Is this a SOHO network, or for a larger business? What kind of budget do you have for this? Some nice switches allow for restriction on a per port basis, which would also help with internal LAN traffic.

[itsisgreat]

We're a WISP. I'd like to spend less than 10K per unit and hope to find something for even less.

[Ethereal_Dragon]

You are an ISP?! In that case, I would HIGHLY suggest that you contact a specialist in networking that works with ISP's. I am not dis-crediting the help that is offered up on the forums, but a SOHO environment if MUCH different than an ISP.

You will likely be looking for a Cisco-like device, with which you can perform traffic shaping in the hardware. Depending on the number of customers, and the way in which the infrastructure is set up, I HIGHLY DOUBT that a software solution will be possible. Extreme Networks hardware is pretty good from what I have been told by peers at work that deal with Customer Equipment, they come recommeded OVER Cisco.
Extreme Networks

[grover]

I'm guessing you're network isn't huge since you've come here for advice rather than paying a consultant or something. We're a WISP with about 800 customers that are pretty spread out. To work with our bandwidth issues (mostly P2P stuff) we bought a few netequalizer boxes and put them throughout the network. It ended up being cheaper to do this than to keep upgrading the more expensive solution we'd been using. And it's been working fine. Since I don't know the details or your situation, I can't say that this is the answer, but it couldn't hurt to check it out.

[itsisgreat]

Thanks for the help.

[dwall26]

I'm guessing you can figure out what I'd suggest. Anyway, let me know if you have any questions about NetEqualizer.