Improving the Performance of a Network by Managing the Bandwidth Utilisation with squidGuard: A Case Study

Abstract

The University of Mines and Technology (UMaT) has a Local Area Network (LAN) with a download and upload bandwidth capacity of 60 MB, which is connected to a Network Operating Center (NOC) by fiber optic cable and distributed to about 3000 users in the UMaT community via Cat 6 Ethernet cables and wireless access connections. The primary purpose of the internet facility is to support teaching and learning, research and sharing of information. Unfortunately, even though the capacity of the bandwidth is considered sufficient, the LAN had two main challenges: the network appeared to be slow; and sometimes it gave signals of insecurity from virus attacks. This paper sought to study the behaviour patterns and bandwidth utilisation trends of the network users using Squid Analysis Report Generator (SARG); identify the causes of the challenges and deploy effective bandwidth management control policies using squidGuard. The results of the study revealed that the challenges of the LAN are attributable to: misuse of the bandwidth mainly by some students on low-priority, bandwidth-hungry websites and applications such as pornographic and other useless websites and peer-to-peer applications; and lack of effective bandwidth management control policies. After the installation of a squidGuard on the firewall server and definition of access protocols and policies to effectively monitor and control the network traffic by giving priority access to legitimate users and restricting access to low-priority, bandwidth-hungry websites and applications, there was a significant increase in the speed and security of the LAN. It is recommended that the installed software packages must be upgraded periodically to sustain the performance of the LAN; the bandwidth capacity could also be increased to 100 MB as the students’ number increases.