There's a lot that goes into determining how much traffic is going to be produced on your network, when that traffic is going to be produced, and who's going to be producing it. Every environment is different.

Fundamentally, you’ll need a pretty good handle on how many users you'll have, how many channels they'll be active on (listening as well as talking), where they're located, and what the network looks like between them.

A key criteria, though, is in knowing what your network transport capabilities are—specifically whether your network supports bi-directional IP multicast or not. This distinction is critical. In a multicast environment, the underlying network infrastructure takes care of efficient distribution of packet traffic; there's no centralized servers that process and/or forward traffic between users. Rather, users' traffic propagates in what is effectively a one-to-many setup.

If your network does not support multicast, you'll have to have some way in which to create a multicast overlay to create a simulated multicast environment. While there's a few ways to do this using 3rd-party tools; our recommended way is to use Rallypoints as high-performance packet forwarders that are optimized for ICE-specific operations.