Netgear FVS318N – Prosafe Wireless N VPN Firewall Reference Manual

Bandwidth profiles determine how data is communicated with the hosts. The purpose of 
bandwidth profiles is to provide a method for allocating and limiting traffic, thus allocating LAN 
users sufficient bandwidth while preventing them from consuming all the bandwidth on your 
WAN link. A single bandwidth profile can be for both outbound and inbound traffic.

For outbound IPv4 traffic, you can apply bandwidth profiles on the WAN interface; for inbound 
IPv4 traffic, you can apply bandwidth profiles to a LAN interface. Bandwidth profiles do not 
apply to the DMZ interface, nor to IPv6 traffic.

When a new connection is established by a device, the device locates the firewall rule 
corresponding to the connection:

If the rule has a bandwidth profile specification, the device creates a bandwidth class in 
the kernel. 

If multiple connections correspond to the same firewall rule, the connections all share the 
same bandwidth class.

An exception occurs for an individual bandwidth profile if the classes are per-source IP 

address classes. The source IP address is the IP address of the first packet that is 
transmitted for the connection. So for outbound firewall rules, the source IP address is the 
LAN-side IP address; for inbound firewall rules, the source IP address is the WAN-side IP 
address. The class is deleted when all the connections that are using the class expire.

After you have created a bandwidth profile, you can assign the bandwidth profile to firewall 

rules on the following screens:

Add LAN WAN Outbound Services screen for IPv4 (see 

Add LAN WAN Inbound Services screen for IPv4 (see 

145)



Select Security > Bandwidth Profiles. The Bandwidth Profiles screen displays. (The 
following figure shows some examples.)