If you have a cisco, it should be able to do this.  Horsepower will be
your biggest question - but if you're talking about a T-1 or less worth of
bandwidth, then this probably isn't an issue.  There are lots of QoS
options in IOS nowadays.  Your cost would be nothing, or the cost of a
consultant to config it, or if you have a support contract, make cisco do
it.  Just check their work.  This is by far the simplest.

Obviously, QoS in Linux and BSD is pretty mature nowadays.  You're just
looking at the cost of a box with a couple of NIC's.

The only other thing I've ever had first-hand experience with is something
called a Packeteer.  They are purple.  The one I saw was a 1U box with a
web interface.  It was purple.  I don't know their capabilities, but a
former customer of mine was using it to shape VOIP traffic across a T-1.
It was also purple.  I would call it Barney, the big purple traffic
shaper.  I don't think they are quite $10,000 - even with support and
upgrades they should still be under $10,000.  Factor in the cost of a
paint job to make it presentable in your equipment room...

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Jeff Rasmussen wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience with QoS for bandwidth management?
> 
> I found some great articles about it but wanted to see if someone was
> experienced enough to give me a price on creating a QoS device to
> regulate our 400 employees outbound proxied web traffic and our 20
> simultaneous VPN clients and email traffic for everybody.
> 
> The network engineer believes that a proprietary solution would cost
> us around $10,000 - $20,000.  He is not willing to work with open
> source software but if I can show a bid for a cheaper, more
> customizable device I believe that might sway him.
> 
> Basically, we don't have enough bandwidth to go around.  Our
> department uses the VPN connections and would be winning to help fund
> more bandwidth if we could guarantee some level of service and nobody
> else is willing to pay for the increase for web browsing.
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Rasmussen
> GPG public key 0x9686C12F
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
> Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org
> Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery
> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
> https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
> 


_______________________________________________
TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org
Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery
tclug-list at mn-linux.org
https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list