Quality of Service (QoS) refers to tools that network devices can use to manage several related characteristics of what happens to a packet while it flows through a network. Specifically, these tools manage the bandwidth made available to that type of packet, the delay the packet experiences, the jitter (variation in delay) between successive packets in the same flow, and the percentage of packet loss for packets of each class. These tools balance the trade-offs of which types of traffic receive network resources and when, giving more preference to some traffic and less preference to others.
QoS tools define actions a device can apply to a message between the time it enters the device until it exits the device. QoS defines these actions as per-hop behaviors (PHBs), which is a formal term to refer to actions other than storing and forwarding a message. These actions can delay the message, discard it, or even change header fields. The device can choose different PHBs for different kinds of messages, improving the QoS behavior for some messages, while worsening the QoS behavior for others.
Introduction to QoS
Routers typically sit at the WAN edge, with both WAN interfaces and LAN interfaces. Those LAN interfaces typically run at much faster speeds, while the WAN interfaces run at slower speeds. While that slower WAN interface is busy sending the packets waiting in the router, hundreds or even thousands more IP packets could arrive in the LAN interfaces, all needing to be forwarded out that same WAN interface. What should the router do? Send them all, in the same order in which they arrived? Prioritize the packets, to send some earlier than others, preferring one type of traffic over another? Discard some of the packets when the number of packets waiting to exit the router gets too large?
QoS refers to the tools that networking devices use to apply some different treatment to packets in the network as they pass through the device. For instance, the WAN edge router would queue packets waiting for the WAN interface to be available. The router could also use a queue scheduling algorithm to determine which packets should be sent next, using some other order than the arrival order—giving some packets better service and some worse service.
QoS: Managing Bandwidth, Delay, Jitter, and Loss
Cisco offers a wide range of QoS tools on both routers and switches. All these tools give you the means to manage four characteristics of network traffic:
- Bandwidth
- Delay
- Jitter
- Loss
Bandwidth refers to the speed of a link, in bits per second (bps). But while we think of bandwidth as speed, it helps to also think of bandwidth as the capacity of the link, in terms of how many bits can be sent over the link per second. The networking device’s QoS tools determine what packet is sent over the link next, so the networking device is in control of which messages get access to the bandwidth next and how much of that bandwidth (capacity) each type of traffic gets over time.
Delay can be described as one-way delay or round-trip delay. One-way delay refers to the time between sending one packet and that same packet arriving at the destination host. Round-trip delay counts the one-way delay plus the time for the receiver of the first packet to send back a packet—in other words, the time it takes to send one packet between two hosts and receive one back. Many different individual actions impact delay, including queuing and shaping delay.
Jitter refers to the variation in one-way delay between consecutive packets sent by the same application. For example, imagine an application sends a few hundred packets to one particular host. The first packet’s one-way delay is 300 milliseconds (300 ms, or .3 seconds). The next packet’s one-way delay is 300 ms; so is the third’s; and so on. In that case, there is no jitter. However, if instead the first packet has a one-way delay of 300 ms, the next has a one-way delay of 310 ms, and the next has 325 ms, then there is some variation in the delay; 10 ms between packets 1 and 2, and another 15 ms between packets 2 and 3. That difference is called jitter.
Loss refers to the number of lost messages, usually as a percentage of packets sent. The comparison is simple: if the sender for some application sends 100 packets, and only 98 arrive at the destination, that particular application flow experienced 2 percent loss. Loss can be caused by many factors, but often, people think of loss as something caused by faulty cabling or poor WAN services. That is one cause. However, more loss happens because of the normal operation of the networking devices, in which the devices’ queues get too full, so the device has nowhere to put new packets, and it discards the packet. Several QoS tools manage queuing systems to help control and avoid loss.
