Quality of

Service
(QoS)
Subject :
Multimedia Communications
 What is QoS How QoS works?
Capability of a network to provide
quality service
01 04 Techniques used to improve QoS
of a network

Factors for Better Service QoS Mechanisms

Four parameters to give better
quality of services
02 05 To manage data traffic quality for
the maintenance of QoS

Why is QoS important? QoS Models

Need of QoS for consumer
experience
03 06 Here you could describe the
topic of the section
QoS is the description
or measurement of
overall performance of
an internetworking
service.
What is Quality of Service (QoS)
• Quality of Service in networking is the process of managing network
resources to reduce packet loss as well as lower network jitter and latency. 
• QoS technology can manage resources by assigning the various types of
network data different priority levels.
• QoS is usually applied on networks that cater to traffic that carry resource-
intensive data like: Video-on-demand, Voice over IP (VoIP), Internet
Protocol television (IPTV), Streamed media, Video conferencing, Online
gaming.
• Many consumer electronic devices in the home are having network
capability nowadays. On the other hand, bandwidth provided always looks
inferior to the increasing demands. 
• Therefore, Quality of Service (QoS) assurance of various home network
applications becomes more and more critical to consumer's experience.
 What are the Four Factors behind better QoS?

Reliability Delay Jitter Bandwidth

Guaranteeing of the The time a packet When delay time of Maximum rate of
delivery of each takes to travel packets start varying data transfer across
packet through network given path
RELIABILTY (Packet Loss)

 Reliability is ensured when there occurs no

packet loss.
 Though slight packet loss does not affect services
like video and audio services. Example, users are
unaware of the loss of a bit or a packet in voice
transmission.
 So, in this case it is more important for file
transfer, mail & internet access to have more
reliable transmission than voice call or video
conference.
 QoS focuses on the packet loss rate. The network
packet loss rate must be controlled within a
certain range during transmission.
 DELAY
 The delay refers to the time required to transmit
a packet or a group of packets from the transmit
end to the receive end.
 Voice transmission is used as an example. Here,
a delay refers to the period during which words
are spoken and then heard.
 If a delay ranging from 100ms to 300ms occurs,
a speaker can sense slight pauses in the
responder's reply, which can seem annoying to
both.
 If the speaker cannot wait but repeats what has
been said, voices overlap, and the quality of the
conversation deteriorates severely.
JITTER
 The jitter is used to describe the degree of
delay change, i.e., the time difference
between the maximum and the minimum
delay.
 Delay of packets over the same connection
are different.
 Jitter is an important parameter for real-time
services, such as voice and video, which are
zero-tolerant of jitters because jitters will
cause voice or video interruptions.
 Packets traveling a fixed physical distance
can take longer or shorter to arrive - or even
arrive out of order. The variation in arrival
times (latency) is the jitter.
Example of Delay and Jitter
● Let us imagine three packets departing at times 1, 2 and 3 respectively
from source.
○ This packets arrive at the destination at times 31, 32 and 33
respectively.
○ So in above scenario all will have same delay of 30 units hence no
jitter is occurring.

● On the other hand if the same three packets departing at times 1, 2 and 3
○ arrive at the destination at times 33, 31 and 38 respectively.
○ so in this scenario the packets have different delays which causes
jitter.
○ Here, the difference in min (31ms) and max (38ms) delay is known
as Jitter.
Four 32 bytes packets are sent and received when pinged to www.google.co.in
Conclusion:
• There occurred no packet loss i.e., 0% packet loss.
• Delay timings of these 4 packets are 2ms, 4ms, 13ms and 3ms respectively.
• The variation in these delay timings is called Jitter. Here, it is the time difference
between delays of min (2ms) and max (13ms).
 BANDWIDTH
• The bandwidth, refers to the maximum
number of transmitted data bits between two
ends within a specified period (1 second)
• Bandwidth is expressed in bit/s.
• Network users all expect higher bandwidth.
• A network needs appropriate bandwidth for
specific application.
• Example, video conferencing needs to send
millions of bits per second which will indeed
need higher bandwidth.
• A lower bandwidth for file transfer or
mailing is acceptable since it isn’t a real time
need.
 Why is QoS important?
 Quality of service is important because
enterprises need to provide stable services for
employees and customers to use.
 Quality of service determines Quality of
Experience (QoE). If the services an organization
provides are not reliable, customer and employee
relationships may be put at risk.
 The employees and customers depend on
communication services to do their jobs. When
quality of service suffers, quality of work and
Quality of Experience suffer as well.
 Additionally, data integrity and security are more
likely to be compromised in a company with a
poor QoS.
How does the QoS work?

● QoS controls and manages network resources by setting priorities for specific types of
data on the network.
● Quality of service tools take on the responsibility of prioritizing packets to get the most
out of the finite amount of bandwidth on their network.
● As the network can only transport so much information in a certain amount of time so, QoS
tools prioritize packets in a way that ensures that bandwidth is used to provide the best
internet service possible in that fixed amount of time.
● For example, packets pertaining to a video call would be prioritized over packets pertaining
to an email download.
● A QoS tool looks at packet headers to prioritize packets and determine that a packet is
related to video streaming and prioritize it over packets that are less time-sensitive.
● It can alter a portion of the packet header to specify priority.
PROBLEM VS. SOLUTION
Problem
Without QoS network data
becomes disorganised & can clog
network leading to performance
degradation
Solution
Implementing Quality of Service
on the network by planning and
understanding each department’s
service needs & requirements
 Quality of Services Mechanisms

Classification Congestion Congestion Policing and Link

& Marking Management Avoidance Shaping Efficiency
Classification & Marking

Classification and marking tools

differentiate between applications and
sort packets into different traffic types.
Marking will mark each packet as a
member of a network class, which
allows devices on the network to
recognize the packet's class.
Classification and marking are
implemented on network devices such
as routers, switches and access points
Classification Marking
 Congestion management
● Congestion management queuing algorithms use
the marking on each packet to determine which
queue to place packets in.
● Each queue is given different treatment based on
the class of packets in the queue.
● Congestion management tools are implemented on
all output interfaces in a QoS enabled network.
● Cisco IOS uses the following congestion
management queuing methods:
○ FIFO (First in First Out), Priority Queuing
(PQ), Custom Queuing (CQ)
○ Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ)
○ Class Based Weighted Fair Queuing
(CBWFQ)
○ Low Latency Queuing (LLQ)
 Congestion Avoidance

Random early detection

● Congestion Avoidance is achieved through
packet dropping.
● These tools monitor network traffic for
congestion and drop low-priority packets
when congestion occurs.
● In short, here congestion is avoided by dropping
low priority packets and allowing high priority
packets to continue their path.
● Congestion avoidance tools include weighted
random early detection (WRED) and random
early detection (RED).
 Policing and Shaping

● Policing or Shaping mechanisms are used to condition traffic

before transmitting or when receiving traffic. Policers and
Shapers can work in tandem; they are not mutually exclusive.
● Policing ensure each traffic type gets the prescribed bandwidth.
● Shaping helps smooth out speed mismatches in the network and
limits transmission rates.
● These mechanisms are typically used to limit the flow from high-
speed links to low-speed links, to prevent the low-speed links from
becoming over run.
• The diagram illustrates the key
difference.
• Traffic policing propagates
bursts. When the traffic rate
reaches the configured
maximum rate, excess traffic is
dropped (or remarked).
• In contrast to policing, traffic
shaping retains excess packets
in a queue and then saves the
excess in a buffer and
schedules it for later
transmission over increments of
time.
Link Efficiency

● Linked Efficiency mechanism is often deployed on WAN links to increase the bandwidth
and decrease the delay & jitter.
● The main link efficiency mechanisms deployed today are compression and fragmentation-
based.
● There are several types of compression: link compression, layer 2 payload compression, RTP
header compression, and TCP header compression. Fragmentation is usually combined with
interleaving.
● Compression makes link utilization more efficient, and it is a QoS technique that makes
more bandwidth available. Compression reduces the size of data to be transferred; therefore,
it increases throughput and reduces overall delay.
● Fragmentation aims at reducing the expected delay of packets by reducing the maximum
packet size over a circuit or connection.
Quality of Services Models

● Best Effort
● Integrated Service
● Differentiated Service
BEST EFFORT
 Not really an implementation as QoS is not explicitly configured.
 This means it doesn’t implement any QoS mechanism at all, that is the reason
why there isn’t any complexity associated to this QoS model.
 This model is used when QoS in not in use or priority at that moment.
 Best Effort model does not work very well with any emerging application
consisting of real-time (RT) traffic demands.
Integrated Service (IntServ)
● It provides very high QoS to IP packets with guaranteed delivery.
● It defines a signaling process for applications to signal to the network which
requires special QoS for a period and that bandwidth should be reserved.
● In short, it is a QoS model that reserves bandwidth along a specific path on the
network.
● Here, applications ask the network for resource reservation and network devices
monitor the flow of packets to make sure network resources can accept the
packets.
● This model however severely limits the scalability of a network.
Differentiated Services (DiffServ)
 This model provides high scalability and flexibility in implementing QoS
compared to other models.
 Here, network devices recognize traffic classes and provide different levels of
QoS to different Traffic Classes (TC).
 Each of these TCs will receive a different Per-Hop-Behaviour (PHB) at each hop
from the source to the destination.
 Each network device on the path treats packets according to the locally defined
PHB.
RESOURCES

● End-to-End QoS Network Design: Quality of Service for Rich-Media & Cloud Networks (Networking
Technology) by Tim Szigeti

● https://searchunifiedcommunications.techtarget.com/definition/QoS-Quality-of-Service

● https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/index.html
THANK YOU