14

Quality of Service (QoS)

14.1 Overview

Quality of Service (QoS) refers to both a network’s ability to deliver data with minimum delay, and the networking methods used to control the use of bandwidth. Without QoS, all traffic data is equally likely to be dropped when the network is congested. This can cause a reduction in network performance and make the network inadequate for time-critical application such as video-on- demand.

Configure QoS on the P-870HN-51D to group and prioritize application traffic and fine-tune network performance. Setting up QoS involves these steps:

1Configure classifiers to sort traffic into different flows.

2Assign priority and define actions to be performed for a classified traffic flow.

The P-870HN-51D assigns each packet a priority and then queues the packet accordingly. Packets assigned a high priority are processed more quickly than those with low priority if there is congestion, allowing time-sensitive applications to flow more smoothly. Time-sensitive applications include both those that require a low level of latency (delay) and a low level of jitter (variations in delay) such as Voice over IP (VoIP) or Internet gaming, and those for which jitter alone is a problem such as Internet radio or streaming video.

This chapter contains information about configuring QoS and editing classifiers.

14.1.1What You Can Do in this Chapter

•The General screen lets you enable or disable QoS and set the upstream bandwidth (Section 14.3 on page 170).

•The Queue Setup screen lets you lets you configure QoS queue assignment (Section 14.4 on page 172).

•The Class Setup screen lets you add, edit or delete QoS classifiers (Section

14.5on page 174).

•The Policer Setup screen lets you control ingress (or incoming) traffic (Section

14.6on page 180).

 

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P-870HN-51D User’s Guide