Chapter 10 The Service Configuration Screens
User’s Guide 127
10.4.8 DSCP and Per-Hop Behavior DiffServ defines a new DS (Differentiated Services) field to replace the Type of
Service (TOS) field in the IP header. The DS field contains a 2-bit unused field and
a 6-bit DSCP field which can define up to 64 service levels. The following figure
illustrates the DS field.
Figure 52 DiffServ: Differentiated Service Field
DSCP is backward compatible with the three precedence bits in the ToS octet so
that non-DiffServ compliant, ToS-enabled network device will not conflict with the
DSCP mapping.
The DSCP value determines the forwarding behavior, the PHB (Per-Hop Behavior),
that each packet gets across the DiffServ network. Based on the marking rule,
different kinds of traffic can be marked for different priorities of forwarding.
Resources can then be allocated according to the DSCP values and the configured
policies.
DSCP
(6-bit)
Unused