3.

2: Implementing
QoS

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Objectives
 Describe the need for QoS as it relates to various types
of network traffic.
 Identify QoS mechanisms.
 Describe the steps used to implement QoS.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

What Is Quality of Service?
Two Perspectives

 The user perspective

Users perceive that their applications are
performing properly
Voice, video, and data

 The network manager perspective

Need to manage bandwidth allocations
to deliver the desired application
performance
Control delay, jitter, and
packet loss

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Different Types of Traffic Have Different
Needs
Sensitivity to
 Real-time applications especially QoS Metrics
Application
sensitive to QoS Examples
Packet
Interactive voice Delay Jitter
Loss
Videoconferencing Interactive Voice
and Video
Y Y Y
 Causes of degraded performance
Congestion losses Streaming Video N Y Y
Variable queuing delays
Transactional/
 The QoS challenge Interactive
Y N N

Manage bandwidth allocations to Bulk Data

deliver the desired application Email N N N
performance File Transfer

Control delay, jitter, and packet

loss
Need to manage
bandwidth allocations

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cisco IOS QoS Tools
 Congestion management:
PQ
CQ
WFQ
CBWFQ

 Queue management
WRED
QoS Toolbox
 Link efficiency
Link fragmentation and interleave
RTP and CRTP

 Traffic shaping and traffic policing

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Priority Queuing

PQ puts data into four levels of queues: high, medium,

normal, and low.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Priority Queuing

 Priority output queuing allows a network administrator

to define four priorities of traffic---high, normal, medium,
and low---on a given interface.

 As traffic comes into the router, it is assigned to one of

the four output queues.

 Packets on the highest-priority queue are transmitted

first.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Priority Queuing ctd..

 When that queue empties, traffic on the next highest-

priority queue is transmitted, and so on.
 This mechanism assures that during congestion, the
highest-priority data does not get delayed by lower-
priority traffic.
 However, if the traffic sent to a given interface exceeds
the bandwidth of that interface, lower-priority traffic can
experience significant delays.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Custom Queuing

CQ handles traffic by assigning a specified amount of queue space to each class of

packet and then servicing up to 17 queues in a round-robin fashion.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

 Custom Queuing
 Custom queuing allows a customer to reserve a
percentage of bandwidth for specified protocols.
 Customers can define up to 10 output queues for
normal data and an additional queue for system
messages such as LAN keepalive messages (routing
packets are not assigned to the system queue).
 The routers service each queue sequentially,
transmitting a configurable percentage of traffic on each
queue before moving on to the next one.
 Custom Queuing guarantees that mission-critical data
is always assigned a certain percentage of the
bandwidth, but also assures predictable throughput for
other traffic.
© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Custom Queuing …
 To provide this feature, routers determine how many
bytes should be transmitted from each queue, based on
the interface speed and the configured percentage.
 When the calculated byte count from a given queue has
been transmitted, the router completes transmission of
the current packet and moves on to the next queue,
servicing each queue in a round-robin fashion.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Weighted Fair Queuing

•WFQ makes the transfer rates and interarrival periods of active high-volume conversations much
more predictable.
© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Weighted Fair Queuing (Flow based)

Flow-Based WFQ: Creating Fairness Among Flows

 For situations in which it is desirable to provide

consistent response time to heavy and light network
users alike without adding excessive bandwidth, the
solution is flow-based WFQ (commonly referred to as
just WFQ).
 It is a flow-based queuing algorithm that creates bit-
wise fairness by allowing each queue to be serviced
fairly in terms of byte count.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

WFQ ….
 For example, if queue 1 has 100-byte packets and
queue 2 has 50-byte packets, the WFQ algorithm will
take two packets from queue 2 for every one packet
from queue 1.
 This makes service fair for each queue: 100 bytes each
time the queue is serviced.
 WFQ ensures that queues do not starve for bandwidth
and that traffic gets predictable service.
 Low-volume traffic streams that comprise the majority
of traffic, receive increased service, transmitting the
same number of bytes as high-volume streams.
 This behavior results in what appears to be preferential
treatment for low-volume traffic, when in actuality it is
creating fairness.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Weighted Random Early Detection

•WRED provides a method that stochastically discards packets if congestion begins to increase.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Implementing QoS

Step 1: Identify types of traffic and

their requirements.

Step 2: Divide traffic into classes.

Step 3: Define QoS policies for

each class.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Step 1: Identify Types of Traffic and Their
Requirements
 Network audit: Identify traffic on the network.
 Business audit: Determine how important each type of
traffic is for business.
 Service levels required: Determine required response
time.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Step 2: Define Traffic Classes

Less than
Scavenger
Best Effort
Class

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Step 3: Define QoS Policy
 A QoS policy is a
network-wide definition of
the specific levels of QoS
that are assigned to
different classes of
network traffic.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Quality of Service Operations
How Do QoS Tools Work?

Classification Queuing and Post-Queuing

and Marking (Selective) Dropping Operations

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Self Check
1. What types of applications are particularly sensitive to
QoS issues?
2. What is WFQ? How is it different than FIFO?
3. What are the 3 basic steps involved in implementing
QoS?
4. What is Scavenger Class?

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Summary
 QoS is important to both the end user and the network
administrator. End users experience lack of QoS as
poor voice quality, dropped calls or outages.
 Network traffic differs in its ability to handle delay, jitter
and packet loss. Traffic sensitive to these issues
requires priority treatment. QoS measures can provide
priority to sensitive traffic, while still providing services
to more resilient traffic.
 Implementing QoS involves 3 basic steps: identify the
types of traffic on your network, divide the traffic into
classes, and define a QoS policy for each traffic class.

© 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.