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Configuring Traffic Classes

The Parallels Business Automation - Standard service level management tools allow you to track the inbound and outbound network traffic for Plesk clients and domains, Containers, and physical dedicated servers. In order to provide the ability to distinguish between domestic and international traffic, a concept of network classes is introduced. It is important to fully understand this notion, because network classes IDs are used in the values of some network traffic parameters. A network class is a range of IP addresses for which traffic is counted and charged.

Parallels Business Automation - Standard allows having up to 15 different network classes specified. Each class can contain one or more IP address ranges.

Classes 1 and 2 have special meanings. Class 1 defines the IP address range for which no accounting is done. Usually, it corresponds to the Virtuozzo Hardware Node subnet (the Node itself and its Containers). Setting up Class 1 is not required; however, its correct setup improves performance.

Class 2 is defined to match any IP address. It must be always present in the network classes definition file. Other classes should be defined after Class 2. They represent exceptions from the "matching-everything" rule of Class 2.

Traffic classes IDs are assigned automatically and cannot be changed later.

Important: A traffic class configuration must be passed to a Hardware Node and stored there in a special network configuration file, so a Hardware Node could 'know' what traffic data must be accounted and passed to Parallels Business Automation - Standard. The procedure of passing a traffic class to a Hardware Node is called 'Synchronization'. Virtuozzo for Unix allows accounting traffic by all the traffic classes, and Plesk as well as Virtuozzo for Windows allow accounting the overall traffic only, i.e., by the Class 2. Please keep in mind that a traffic class must be synchronized with a Node to make traffic accounting by this class possible. Traffic classes synchronization can be initiated using the Synchronize traffic classes button at the traffic classes list screen, or its current synchronization state can be checked at the Synchronization details tab within a traffic class details.

The tools for traffic classes management are grouped under the Service Director - Service Level Manager - Traffic Classes.

The order of traffic accounting follows the order of traffic classes in the list shown at the Traffic Classes screen.

Note: Traffic accounting by classes can be set for all hosting plan types (except Miscellaneous and Domain Registration). For all types of Virtuozzo Unix hosting plans (Container, Dedicated Virtuozzo server, Plesk server in Container) and dedicated hosting all traffic classes are applicable. For Plesk (Dedicated Plesk Server, Plesk Client, Plesk Domain) and Virtuozzo for Windows hosting plan types only Class 2 is applicable.

To add a network class:

  1. Click Traffic Classes on the Service Level Manager submenu. The list of all traffic classes appears on the screen.
  2. Click the Add Traffic Class button.
  3. Fill the form that appears:
    1. Enter the traffic class friendly name into the Traffic Class Name field.
    2. To perform the traffic accounting by the class and make it possible to define the traffic accounting by this class for hosting plans, you need to enable the traffic class by checking the Enabled box.
    3. You can add a free-form comment into the Description field.
  4. Click the OK button. The newly created traffic class properties appear on the screen. They display all the data entered for the class plus one more property - the used field. This field shows whether a class is used in hosting plan(s) or not (green tick -yes, used, red cross - not used). If a traffic class is used in at least one hosting plan, it cannot be deleted.
  5. Click the IP Ranges tab to define the range(s) of IP addresses to be accounted.
  6. Click the Add IP range button.
  7. Fill the form that appears:
    1. Type the starting IP address into the IP range and the netmask in the bit form into the Range prefix field.
    2. You can add the detailed description of the IP range into the Description field.
  8. Click the OK button.

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