MetricSplit › Bandwidth management
Bandwidth management: a monitoring tool that tells you which lever to pull
Managing bandwidth comes down to four levers: move traffic to a circuit that has room, limit applications that don't need the room, pay for less where a circuit carries almost nothing, or pay for more. MetricSplit is a bandwidth monitoring tool that measures every WAN circuit and tells you which lever fits, with the evidence.
The four levers
| Lever | When it fits | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Rebalance | One circuit is full while another at the same site has room. | No purchase needed. |
| Restrict | Non-business applications take enough room that limiting them brings the circuit under the line. | A policy change. It frees room; it doesn't lower the bill on its own. |
| Right-size | A circuit carries almost nothing in business hours. | Check the flow export first, then price a smaller plan. |
| Upgrade | Rebalancing and limiting apps can't bring it under 85%. | Enter the next plan's price and the cost shows beside the verdict. |
What the tool measures
- How full each circuit runs at its busiest business-hours moments, per direction: the 95th percentile of 5-minute readings over 7 days.
- What the traffic is: business, neutral (updates, backups, sign-in) or non-business such as streaming and social media, by application and by site.
- How much of the capacity you pay for carries non-business traffic, in Mbps and, once your circuit prices are in, in money.
- How much room limiting non-business apps would free on each circuit, before anyone writes a policy.
What it doesn't do
MetricSplit measures, reports and recommends. It never touches your traffic and doesn't apply policies: every change is made by your team, in your own tools, when you decide.
Questions about bandwidth management
What is bandwidth management?
Making sure each circuit has the room its business traffic needs at its busiest moments, at the lowest cost: by placing traffic on the right circuit, limiting what doesn't need the room, and sizing each circuit to what it actually carries.
Does limiting non-business traffic save money?
Not on its own: you still pay for the same circuit. It frees room, and that room is worth money when it avoids an upgrade or lets you move to a smaller plan.
What should a bandwidth monitoring tool show?
For every circuit: how full it runs at its busiest moments in each direction, what fills it, and what to do about it. A graph of total traffic over a day shows none of the three.
Find the right lever for every circuit
Flow records only (metadata, no packet contents), never in your traffic path.