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QoS Marking-
Confusion lifted
Adnan Shabbir (BE, PMP, PRINCE2, CCNP, SASE, SDWAN)
8 articles Follow
Cloud Transf & Arch Manager at Accenture

June 2, 2020

Open Immersive Reader

This is a short overview QoS marking used in provision of

network QoS. The purpose of this article is to try and
remove confusions regarding QoS marking at layer 2 and
layer 3 by explaining it in simple terms.

QoS markings can be done on both layer 2 (both access

and trunk traffic) and layer 3 (on IP packets) Some work and
standardization has been done to keep these markings
uniform across the network, however, some more provision
is also done on layer 3 to provide a more granular structure
of QoS marking.

Let's us start with layer 2 QoS marking

Layer 2 QoS Marking

Layer 2 traffic would be of two types. Traffic in trunk with

802.1q header and access traffic without 802.1q.

802.1q Trunk marking

802.1q tag on layer 2 header adds 4 bytes to the header to

provide with a VLAN ID. Out of those 4 bytes, 3 bits are
called 'Priority bits (PRI)'. These bits provide 8 combinations

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(2^3) and they are termed as CoS (Class of Service) tags. It

means we have 0 to 7 markings available now to mark the
traffic and treat it on devices. However, Cisco says that we
should keep class 6 and 7 reserved for the network protocol
traffic. Hence, we can only use number from 0 to 5.

These markings are termed as COS0 to COS7 classes. COS-0

is termed as default class or best effort class, which simply
means it has the lowest priority in traffic.

802.1p access traffic marking

However, what if traffic is not in a trunk and coming from a

device, and you want that device to set the marking of the
traffic it is originating. In that case, you need a device that is
enabled with 802.1p marking. 802.1p tag is similar to
802.1q tag (4bytes), it will set the PRI value according to
CoS marking and leave the VLAN ID as all zeroes.

Layer 3 - IP traffic marking

Layer 2 markings are lost when the packet moves from hop
to hop and L2 header keeps changing. Hence, QoS marking
on layer 3 can help as it can go all the way through the
path.

IPv4 packet header has a field called 'Type of Service (TOS)'.

It is a 8 bit field. These 8 bits are used in QoS toolkit. IPv6
has a similar 8 bit field called 'Traffic Class'.

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There are two models of marking the traffic.

1. IP Precedence (uses only 3 bits for marking)

2. DSCP (uses 6 bits for marking)

IP Precedence

IP precedence uses first (left or most significant) 3 bits of

those 8 bits TOS field to provide classes exactly like COS of
layer 2 header. Some devices simply translate that COS field
from the layer 2 header into IP precedence bit by bit. Rest
of the bits in the TOS field are set as zero or ignored.

Differentiated Services Control Point

However, both COS and IPP are using only 3 bits of the TOS
field not providing enough classes and granularity. That is
where DSCP marking is used which takes 6 first (left or
most significant bits) of the TOS field. This provides us with
64 possible markings of traffic from 0 to 63 in decimal. Now
these are way too many values for marking. Hence, IETF
came up with a standard use of DSCP marking by
introducing 21 preselected values. These markings are
referred to as PHB (Per Hop Behavior) markings. These
markings are given names for our easy understanding and
coordination. Note that the last bit of these six bits is
always set to zero in any of the markings.

These classes are

1. Default-class 0 (000 000)- This is equivalent to the

COS0 class, which means default or best effort class.

2. EF - 46 (101 110)- Explicit forwarding class is reserved

for the most important delay sensitive traffic which is
usually voice. EF class is usually mapped to Priority
Queue which is serviced completely before any other
queues.

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3. CS-1 to 7- Class selector values use 3 most significant

bits of the 6 bits while other bits are set to zero. Which
means CS1 is 001000 and class 7 is 111 000 in binary.
CS0 is not used as it is similar to default class. CS is
similar to IP precedence and can be used to map COS
marking bit by bit. Hence, CS model can be used where
some routers on the path are only configured to work
on IP precedence.

4. AF (Assured Forwarding)- Assured forwarding use 5

bits instead of 3 and provide something called 'drop
preference or precedence' in addition to class. There
are 4 classes and 3 drop probabilities. Drop probability
tells the queue congestion avoidance tool (like RED or
WRED) to drop the traffic with highest drop
precedence, then medium and then low probability.
Important point to note here is that WRED will drop
the traffic with high drop precedence even it belongs
to a higher class before dropping a packet from a
lower assured forwarding class with lower drop
precedence. In AF naming structure, the last bit of 6
bits is always zero, the first 3 bits indicates the first of
AF class number, while remaining two bits maps to the
second number of class. First digit thus tell the class ID,
while second digit tells the drop precedence. A higher
second digit means higher chances of getting
dropped.

Note: The last 2 bits of the TOS field are used for explicit
congestion notification (ECN). If ECN bits are 11, it means
the sender devices has congestion in its queue and it wants
the receiver to slow down. 00 means the device is not
enabled for ECN and 01,10 means it is enabled but there is
no congestion.

Conclusion

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We have concluded that layer 2 markings can be done on

both trunk and access port using 3 bits of COS. We noticed
that these 3 COS bits can be translated into IP precedence
to carry on layer 3 networks. We found that using 3 bits for
QoS is where COS-0 is for default and COS-6 and 7 are
reserved for network routing, we are only left with 5 classes
which could be less. So, we used DSCP 6 bit values to get
more granular and hierarchical 64 values. But since 64
values we way too many for a model (Cisco recommends
less than 11 classes), IETF standardized the use by pre-
selected 21 class of default-class, Explicit Forwarding (EF)
for voice, Class Selector (CS-1 to CS-7) and Assured
Forwarding (AF) 12 classes. AF came with Drop Precedence
for congestion avoidance algorithm to prioritize dropping
the packets. We noticed that CS and IP precedence at same
in representation and can be used for interoperability. CS
and IP precedence can also be mapped easily with COS.

All of this can be summarized in the table below.

For questions, please leave a comment and I will get back

to you.

Authored by

Adnan Shabbir

Senior IP Engineer

Now IT Solutions, QLD, Australia

June 2, 2020

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SDWAN) 8 Follow
Cloud Transf & Arch Manager at Accenture articles
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QoS marking, simplified #QoS #qualitymanagement

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Adnan Shabbir (BE, PMP, PRINCE2, CCNP, SASE, SDWAN)

Cloud Transf & Arch Manager at Accenture

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