Community Action Suffolk is committed to providing all end users with broadband services which fulfils expectations in terms of quality, reliability and price. Community Action Suffolk therefore needs to manage the usage of its networks so that the service level experience by most end users is not affected by small numbers of end users running applications which generate disproportionate high levels of traffic.

Traffic (or packet) management is a generic term for a set of systems which we use to monitor network traffic levels and selectively slow down certain types of packet. In particular traffic management is applied to packets generated by peer-to-peer applications, such as iPlayer and BitTorrent.

Traffic management is a dynamic process, which has the greatest effect when traffic levels are at their peak. Typically traffic rises from 4pm, peaks between 9pm and 10pm and then reduces after midnight. End users who routinely use peer-to-peer applications are aware of this, so may choose to configure their applications to run when traffic levels are at their lowest.