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Writer's pictureSherry Wei

WAN Link Utilization Dashboard FAQ

What is the WAN Link Utilization Dashboard for?

WAN Link Utilization Dashboard is part of the Intelligent Edge dashboard group. It answers the following questions


  1. How much percentage of provisioned bandwidth a given site is consuming, for example, is the site consuming 10%, 40% or 50% of bandwidth in a download direction (from Internet to site) on a 1Gbps WAN link speed in the past hour, past day and past week? How about upload link utilization?

  2. How much time does a site spend for a given link utilization, for example, does the site spend most of the time at 40% download link utilization and 10% upload link utilization?


The answers to these questions provide IT department insights to the bandwidth consumption characteristics and trends of a given site. Are we under provisioning or over provisioning? It helps planning for upsizing your WAN bandwidth to meet future demands. In other situations you may consider downsizing the bandwidth if the link consumption is consistently below a threshold.


What is the chart for upload/download utilization?


Upload/download link utilization chart
Upload/download Link Utilization chart

The above chart describes, for a given site, the upload and download link utilization during the past hour, pas 3 hours, pas day and week.


How is the link utilization calculated?

The link utilization is calculated by the data throughput divided by the provisioned link speed. For example, a download data throughput is 340mbps for a 1Gbps download speed, then the link utilization is 340/1000 = 34%


On Bumblebee platform, data throughput is exported every minute, so the throughput is calculated by the number of bytes sent or received by the CPE device divided by 60 seconds.


What is the chart for Download utilization distribution?


download link utilization distribution
download link utilization distribution

The download direction is for data download from the Internet to the site.


The above chart paints a picture of what the download link utilization looks like in the past hour, 3 hours, day or week. The x-axis are the ranges for the link utilization, where the first range is less than 10%, followed by 20%, 30% and all the way to 100%. The y-axis are the ranges of time distribution.


For example, in the above chart, the site spent 99.9% of the past hour consuming less than 10% of the provisioned bandwidth. It spent 0.01% of time consuming between 10-20% of the bandwidth. (If you move the cursor to the bar, you should see the actual distribution number, such as 99.9 or 0.01). This example depicts a lightly used WAN link as the link utilization is mostly under 10%.



What is the chart for Upload utilization distribution?


The upload direction is for data upload from the site to the Internet.


upload link utilization distribution
upload link utilization distribution

The upload utilization distribution is exactly the same as the download utilization distribution except it's in the opposite direction.


What does a weekly link utilization mean?

If you select time range to Week, the WAN Link Utilization chart should provide visibility of bandwidth consumption throughout the week. It maybe that on certain days, say Monday, the utilization is higher than on other days, say Friday.


Do you have a chart for longer time range?

We are working on longer time range, for example, a month, a year and to date. Longer range time provides bandwidth consumption trend to aid planning for the coming years. Stay tuned.

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