SonicOS 7.1 Objects

Table of Contents

Bandwidth Managing Access to Entire Domain

This section is applicable only for Classic Mode.

Streaming media is one of the most profligate consumers of network bandwidth. But trying to control access, or manage bandwidth allotted to these sites is difficult because most sites that serve streaming media tend to do so off of large server farms. Moreover, these sites frequently re-encode the media and deliver it over HTTP, making it even more difficult to classify and isolate. Manual management of lists of servers is a difficult task, but wildcard FQDN address objects can be used to simplify this effort. Below is an example of controlling access to entire domain by bandwidth management.

To control access to entire domain by bandwidth management

  1. Create FQDN Address Objects..

    1. Navigate to OBJECT | Match Objects > Addresses > Address Objects.

    2. Click Add and create the following address object.

      Upon initial creation, *.youtube.com resolves to IP addresses 208.65.153.240, 208.65.153.241, 208.65.153.242, but after an internal host begins to resolve hosts for all of the elements within the youtube.com domain, the learned host entries are added, such as the entry for the v87.youtube.com server (208.65.154.84).

  2. Create the Bandwidth Object.

    1. Navigate to OBJECT | Profile Objects > Bandwidth.

    2. Click Add and create the bandwidth object.

  3. Create an Access Rule.

    1. Navigate to POLICY | Rules and Policies | Access Rules.

    2. Click Add and create the Access Rule with Address Object and Bandwidth profile object created in the above steps.

      For more information, refer to SonicOS 7.1 Rules and Policies Administration Guide for Classic Mode.

    After the access rule is created, the Bandwidth Management icon appears within the Access Rule table, indicating that BWM is active and providing statistics. Hover over the icon to see the BWM settings.

    Access to all *.youtube.com hosts, using any protocol, is now be cumulatively limited to speed that you have set, a low percentage of your total available bandwidth for all user sessions.