HP Networking TopTool Products manual Quality of Service, Overview

11

Quality of Service

This chapter discusses the benefits of the Quality of Service features available in HP TopTools for Hubs & Switches. It includes:

■Overview

■Basic Operation

■Viewing All Currently Configured QoS Policies

■Configuring a QoS Policy for Specific Devices (IP Addresses)

■Configuring a QoS Policy for IP Type of Service (ToS)

■Adding a Policy for a Specific IP Address

■Configuring a QoS Policy for Specific Protocols

■Configuring a QoS Policy for a Specific VLAN

Overview

Quality of Service (QoS) is a general term for classifying and prioritizing traffic throughout a network. QoS enables you to establish a traffic priority policy to improve control and throughput of important data.

There will always be points in the network where multiple traffic streams merge or where network links will change speed and capacity, so it is impor- tant to move traffic on the basis of relative importance. Without QoS prioriti- zation, less important traffic can consume network bandwidth and slow down or halt the delivery of more important traffic. For example, without QoS, most traffic received by a switch is forwarded with the same priority it had when entering the switch. In many cases, such traffic is “normal” priority and competes for bandwidth with all other normal-priority traffic, regardless of its relative importance to your organization’s mission. QoS keeps the most important network traffic moving at an acceptable speed regardless of current bandwidth usage. This means you can manage available bandwidth so that the most important traffic goes first.

As of Summer 1999, HP TopTools for Hubs & Switches can configure a QoS policy in your network for the following HP Procurve Switches running the C.07.XX (or later) software release:

■HP Procurve Switch 1600M

■HP Procurve Switch 2400M

■HP Procurve Switch 2424M

■HP Procurve Switch 4000M