> # Dynamic Bandwidth Management

> On port switching modules where bandwidth is shared, the bandwidth available to each port within a port group can be configured based on the port rate mode and speed configurations. Within a port group, some ports can be configured in dedicated rate mode while others operate in shared mode.

> Ports configured in dedicated rate mode are allocated the required bandwidth to sustain a line rate of traffic at the maximum configured operating speed, and ports configured in shared mode share the available remaining bandwidth within the port group. Bandwidth allocation among the shared mode ports is based on the operational speed of the ports. For example, if four ports operating at speeds 1 Gbps, 1 Gbps, 2 Gbps, and 4 Gbps share bandwidth of 8 Gbps, the ratio of allocation would be 1:1:2:4.

> Unutilized bandwidth from the dedicated ports is shared among only the shared ports in a port group as per the ratio of the configured operating speed. A port cannot be brought up unless the reserved bandwidth is quaranteed for the shared ports (see Table 13-9). For dedicated ports, configured bandwidth is taken into consideration while calculating available bandwidth for the port group. This behavior can be changed using bandwidth fairness by using the rate-mode bandwidth-fairness module number command.

> For example, consider a 48-port 8-Gbps module. This module has 6 ports per port group with 12.8 Gbps bandwidth. Ports 3 to 6 are configured at 4 Gbps. If the first port is configured at 8 Gbps dedicated rate mode, and the second port is configured at 4-Gbps dedicated rate mode, then no other ports can be configured at 4 Gbps or 8 Gbps because the left over bandwidth of 0.8 Gbps (12.8-(8+4)) cannot meet the required 0.96 Gbps for the remaining four ports. A minimum of 0.24 Gbps reserved bandwidth is required for the for the rest of the four ports. However, if the two ports (for example, 5 and 6) are taken out of service (which is not same as shutdown), required reserved bandwidth for the two ports (3 and 4) is 0.48 and port 2 can be configured at 4 Gbps in dedicated rate mode. This behavior can be overridden by the bandwidth fairness command in which case reserved bandwidth is not enforced. Once the port is up, ports 3 and 4 can share the unutilized bandwidth from ports 1 and 2.

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