Ethernet Service Shaping Requirements

This document outlines the shaping requirements for business grade ethernet services such as NBN Enterprise Ethernet and Telstra EA.

Overview

All business grade ethernet services require shaping to be applied on your router equivilant to 95-95% of the subscribed bandwidth to avoid the carrier policiers from dropping packets. If this is not configured correctly you will see impacts to the speed of your service.

Example of why shaping is required on your router

Why do carriers require this?

For business grade services such as Telstra EA or nbn EE, these services are delivered with a Network Termination Device (NTD) which will then be uplinked to your router (CPE). This uplink is typically 1000/1000Mbps (1Gbe/1Gbe). Without shaping your router uses the interface speed as its limiter and will try to transmit data at this speed rather than the speed you are paying for.

In order for the carrier to ensure you only use the bandwidth you are paying for they will use policiers on their network. Should your service burst above its subscribed speed, the carrier will drop the packets resulting in slow speeds on the connection.

Why can't I set the shaping to the full speed of my service?

The way a policer works is that it will sample the data at particular intervals. This varies from carrier to carrier. In addition the shaping mechanism on a router will also sample data at particular intervals and this will vary between router vendors.

Because of this we typically recommend to configure your shaping to 95-98% of the connection speed but in some circumstances you may need to go lower.

Each router will have its "sweet spot". To get the best speed out of your connection try gradually incrementing the speed of your shaper and then performing a speed test. For the most accurate results - use our WAN diagnostic tool.

Why is this not required with NBN TC4 or TC2?

These service types are delivered with either PPPoE or via DHCP (IPoE) which allows for attributes to be communicated to your router to tell it the maximum speed it can communicate at. This is not possible with ethernet services that use a static IP.