Hello Madison Linux User Group [1] and interested parties!

Summary
- - - - - - - - - -

  what:   introduction to traffic control with Linux
  when:   2003-09-16, Tuesday 19:00/20:00
 where:   room 1240, Computer Science building, UW Madison [2]
   who:   Martin A. Brown

Below you'll find a more detailed overview of the content of my
presentation and some relevant details.


Overview
- - - - - - - - - -
Traffic control encompasses the sets of mechanisms and operations by
which packets are queued for transmission/reception on a network
interface. The operations include enqueueing, policing, classifying,
scheduling, shaping and dropping.  The presentation will introduce
the key concepts of traffic control, and the components of the Linux
implementation.  The presentation will conclude with a description
of a practical example of a traffic control configuration.


Content
- - - - - - - - - -

I expect to be able to introduce the following ideas:

  - What is traffic control?
  - What good is traffic control?
  - What are the elements of traffic control?
    - shaping, classifying, dropping, scheduling, and marking
    - queues, flows, tokens, and buckets
  - What does the Linux implementation look like?
  - What software/kernel support do I need?

And at the end, I'll describe a practical traffic control scenario 
with an example configuration.


Assumptions
- - - - - - - - - -

I will assume that the audience knows the structure of an IP packet
and understands basic IP routing.  Deeper knowledge of IP 
networking and Internet technologies will be beneficial, but not 
critical.  I'll endeavor to use plain English as much as possible.

Those who wish can consult the pre-release of my Traffic Control
HOWTO [5], although I will not assume that the audience has any
familiarity with traffic control concepts.


Who, when, where
- - - - - - - - - -
I have been working with Linux since 1997, and have worked for
SecurePipe, Inc. [3] since 1998.  Over the last year, I have devoted
personal time to documentation [4] on the policy routing and traffic
control features of the 2.2 and 2.4 kernels.

On Tuesday evening, September 16th at approximately 19:00, the
Madison Linux Users Group [1] welcomes the interested public to room
1240 at the Computer Science building of UW Madison [2] for two
presentations.  Darrick Hartmann will present an introduction to
Knoppix beginning at 19:00 and I will follow at approximately 
20:00 (8 p.m.) with the above described presentation.

-Martin

  [1]  http://www.madisonlinux.org/
  [2]  http://www.madisonlinux.org/meeting_locations.shtml
       http://cs.wisc.edu/directions/
       http://www.cs.wisc.edu/directions/map2.gif
  [3]  http://www.securepipe.com/
  [4]  http://linux-ip.net/
  [5]  http://linux-ip.net/articles/Traffic-Control-HOWTO/

-- 
Martin A. Brown --- Wonderfrog Enterprises --- martin@wonderfrog.net