QoS

Quality of Service

Presentation_ID

1999, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Benefits of QoS

QoS features provide improved and more predictable

network service by offering the following:
Dedicated bandwidth
Improved loss characteristics
Congestion management and Avoidance
Traffic Shaping
Prioritization of traffic

What makes up QoS?

Quality of Service is managing:

Loss (packets that never get there)
Delay (packets that take too long to get there)
Jitter (variations in the arrival times of packets)
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Components of QoS - Loss

Loss refers to the percentage of packets that fail to reach their

destination.
Loss can result from errors in the network, corrupted frames and
congested networks. With modern switched and optically based
networks corrupted frames and packet losses due to network noise,
interference and collisions are becoming rare.
Many of the packets lost in a healthy network are actually deliberately
dropped by networking devices as a means of avoiding congestion.
For many TCP/IP based traffic flows, such as those associated with file
and print services, small numbers of lost packets are of little concern.
For UDP traffic associated with real-time applications such as streaming
media and voice, retransmission is not feasible and losses are less
tolerable. As a guide, a highly available network should suffer less than
1% loss and for voice traffic the loss should approach 0%.

Components of QoS - Delay

Delay or Latency refers to the time it takes for a
packet to travel from the source to the destination.
Delay is comprised of fixed and variable delays.
Fixed delays comprise such events as serialization
and encoding/decoding.

(Eg a bit takes a fixed 100ns to exit a 10Mb Ethernet interface)

Variable delays are often the result of congestion

and include the time packets spend in network
buffers waiting their turn to access the media.
Delay is a more significant problem for network
traffic that is bi-directional in nature as the delays
tend to be additive.
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Components of QoS - Jitter

Delay variation or Jitter is the difference in the delay
times of consecutive packets.
Jitter results in degraded audio performance.
Jerky motion, loss of video quality or total loss of
video depending on the encoding scheme used.
Hardware such as IP Phones use a jitter buffer to
smooth out arrival times. However there are limits
on a buffers ability to do this. In general, traffic that
requires low latency will also require that variation
in latency is also kept to a minimum. This is
because any buffering used to reduce jitter will
directly add to the total delay in the network.
Design rule - voice networks cannot cope with more
than 30 ms of jitter.
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Components of QoS - Availability

No point implementing QoS if your network is down!
Implement redundancy as well.
ISP 2

ISP 1

Multihomed WAN
or Redundant Core Layer

S i

HSRP

S i

STP

Quality of Service Requirements for

Data
Use the proven relative priority model to
divide traffic into no more than four
classes, such as:
Gold (Mission-Critical)
Transactional, software
Silver (Guaranteed-Bandwidth)
Streaming video, messaging, intranet
Bronze (Best-Effort and Default class)
Internet browsing, E-Mail
Less-than-Best-Effort (Optional; higher-drop preferences)
FTP, backups, applications (Napster, KaZaa)
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Quality of Service Requirements for

Voice
Voice traffic should be given:
Loss should be no more than 1%.
One-way latency should be no more than 150-200 ms.
Average jitter should be no more than 30 ms.
21-106 kbps of guaranteed priority bandwidth is
required per call (depending on the sampling rate,
codec and Layer 2 overhead).
150 bps (+ Layer 2 overhead) per phone of guaranteed
bandwidth is required for Voice Control traffic.
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Quality of Service Requirements for

Video
Requirements vary:
Video conferencing requirements are similar to voice.
Streaming media is often buffered for several seconds
so latency requirements can be relaxed.
Allow for videos bursty nature

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Quality of Service Mechanisms

QoS Service Models:
Best Effort

The default if no explicit QoS is configured

Integrated Services Model IntServ

RSVP A pre-negotiated QoS path is established end-to-end.

Not well established as the application software must do the
negotiating.

Differentiated Services Model DiffServ

Each hop (router) prioritises traffic according to configuration.

Sometimes referred to as a per-hop-behaviour.

DiffServ is the focus of this course

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Establishing Differentiated Services

There is a need to tag traffic with a QoS level so
that a specific per-hop treatment can be applied:
Layer 2 CoS Class of Service field.
3 bits 0-7 value
Field is present in ISL and 802.1Q/P encapsulations

Layer 3 ToS Type of Service field.

3 bits 0-7 value
Only relevant to IP
Often referred to as IP Precedence

Layer 3 DSCP Differentiated Services Code Point

Supersedes ToS
6 bits (first 3 bits are ToS)

0-63 value

0 is the lowest priority

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Establishing Differentiated Services

It may seem confusing to have three
options for marking traffic:
The way to proceed is often determined by the QoS
capabilities of hosts, switches and routers within the
network.
In many instances it may be necessary to use different
marking techniques at different points within a
network.
For example, it is common to use the DSCP to mark the
QoS requirements of packets through the routed layers
of the network and mark the frames using the CoS to
allow layer 2 devices such as switches to provide for
the QoS requirements of packet at the data link layer.
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Modular QoS Command Line Interface

MQC
The Modular QoS Command Line Interface or
MQC is central to Ciscos model for
implementing IOS based QoS solutions. The
MQC breaks down the tasks associated with
QoS into modules that:
Identify traffic flows
Classify traffic flows as belonging to a common class
of QoS.
Apply QoS policies to that class
Define the interfaces on which the policy should be
enforced.
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MQC Classification of traffic

The class-map
Catalyst
2950

Catalyst
3550

Description

access-group

Access group

ip dscp

A specific DSCP
value or a list of
values

ip precedence

A specific IP
precedence value or
a list of values

any

Any packet

class-map

A nested class-map

destinationaddress

A destination MAC
address

Select an input
interface to match on

mpls

Multiprotocol Label
Switching values

protocol

Match on protocol
type

A source MAC
address

VLAN ID

Match on

The class map is used to associate

one of several attributes with a QoS
treatment that should be given to
that traffic.
The attributes available vary
depending on the hardware
platform.

input-interface

Example:
Switch(config)# class-map match-any critical
Switch(config-cmap)# match interface fastethernet 0/1
Any traffic coming in on fa0/1 will be classed as critical.
In the next slide we define what to do with critical traffic.

source-address

vlan

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MQC - Defining the QoS Policy

The policy-map
The policy-map command is used to create a traffic policy.
The purpose of a traffic policy is to configure the QoS
features that should be associated with the traffic that has
been classified in a user-specified traffic class. A traffic
policy contains three elements:
Policy Name
Traffic class (specified with the class command)
QoS policies to be applied to each class
Eg.
Switch(config)# policy-map policy1
Switch(config-pmap)# class critical
Switch(config-pmap-c)# bandwidth 3000

A bandwidth total of 3000 kbps will be given to the traffic classified as critical by the
class-map in the previous slide.
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MQC - Applying the policy to an interface

The service-policy

Just like an Access List, you must apply a

service-policy to a particular interface and
specify it as applying to input or output traffic.
Switch(config)# interface fastethernet 0/1
Switch(config-if)# service-policy output policy1
Switch(config-if)# exit

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MQC Using QoS in real networks

When classifying traffic, several common situations
arise:
Downstream hardware has already set the QoS field at layer 2 or 3. For
example an IP phone can set CoS.
You can choose to trust the device and copy the ToS/CoS.
You can re-write the CoS to a new value
Perhaps trust an IP phone but not the CoS/ToS from a PC

Downstream device has not set any QoS field.

You can assign traffic with a default QoS value.

At the edge of the network (Access layer, and links to other autonomous
systems) it is common to not trust CoS/ToS values. Rather you would use
ACLs to define the QoS requirements and write an appropriate CoS/Tos Value
In the core of your network it is likely that you will trust the CoS/ToS that you
assigned at the edge.
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Winners and Losers

In order to give priority QoS to one class of traffic, another (lower) class of traffic must suffer.
Policing Involves either marking down the DSCP value for packets that are exceeding the bandwidth allocation
(non conforming) or dropping the packet.
Policing uses a
Token Bucket to
determine non
conformance.
Rate and burst-size
are configurable
CAR Committed Access
Rate Similar to Frame
Relays CIR

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Scheduling

Scheduling is used to give different

queueing priorities according to the
packet or frames DSCP or CoS value.
First In First Out FIFO (No QoS treatment)
Weighted Fair Queuing - WFQ
Class Based Weighted Fair Queuing - CBWFQ

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Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ)

WFQ Services queues with a higher ToS more frequently than those
with a lower ToS

Traffic Destined
for Interface
Transmit Queue

Output Line

Classify

Weighted Fair Scheduling

Configurable Number of
Queues

Flow-Based Classification by:

Source and destination address
Protocol
Session identifier (port/socket)

Interface Buffer
Resources

Weight Determined by:

Requested QoS (IP Procedure, RSVP)

Frame Relay FECN, BECN, DE
(For FR Traffic)
Flow throughput (weighted-fair)

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Class-Based Weighted Fair Queuing

Class 1

Traffic is
grouped into
user-defined
classes.

BW=64

Weight=32

Class 2
BW=128

3
4

Interface

Weight=16

1
2

WFQ

Dispatch

Class 3
BW=32
Weight=64

The weighted fair queuing algorithm is applied

to classes rather than the flows themselves.

2002, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

BCRAN v1.113-16 22

Low Latency Queuing

Priority Class

V V
1 1

Class 1

2 2

Class 2

3 3

Class 3

4 4

6 5

Class-Default

Interface
PQ

V V
1 1

WFQ

LLQ provides for strict priority queuing of voice

traffic (V).

2002, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

BCRAN v1.113-27 23

Congestion Avoidance

Prioritising traffic in a congested network is fine but it would be

better to avoid the congestion altogether.
Congestion leads to dropped packets. By default packets are dropped
indiscriminately once a routers buffers are full. This is known as tail
drop.
Dropping packets causes TCP to reduce its window-size thus reducing the
data rate and lessening congestion good!
Tail drop causes many TCP sessions to do this simultaneously bad!
This means that bandwidth may not be fully utilised and it results in a traffic
flow that resembles a saw tooth.
Tail drop can result in bursty traffic flows that cause other problems such as
jitter.

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Congestion Avoidance
Weighted Random Early Detection - WRED
RED drops packets randomly when a routers buffer fills beyond a
certain threshold. This random dropping prevents the problems
associated with tail-drop. No actual data loss occurs because TCP
retransmits.
WRED takes this one step further and facters in QoS parameters when
it randomly drops a packet.
WRED drops packets according to the following criteria:
RSVP flows are given precedence over non-RSVP flows, to ensure that time-critical
packets are transmitted as required.
The IP precedence or DSCP value of the packets. Packets with higher precedence are less
likely to be dropped. You can control how WRED determines when and how often to drop
packets based on precedence value if you are not satisfied with the default settings.
The amount of bandwidth used by the traffic flow. Flows that use the most bandwidth are
more likely to have packets dropped.
The weight factor you have defined for the interface determines how frequently packets are
dropped.

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Traffic Shaping
Designed

to smooth traffic flows by limiting

instantaneous bandwidth.
Cisco IOS QoS software has three types of traffic shaping:
Generic Traffic Shaping (GTS)
Class-based (CAR)
Frame Relay Traffic Shaping (FRTS)
All three traffic shaping methods are similar in implementation,
though their CLIs differ somewhat and they use different types of
queues to contain and shape traffic that is deferred. In particular
the token bucket is employed by all schemes.

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QoS over low speed links

The limited bandwidth of a low speed WAN

link creates particular challenges on QoS.
Prioritisation of delay sensitive traffic
becomes critical.
Sometimes waiting for just one packet is
too long!

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QoS over low speed links

Examine the table below. It outlines the time taken for
various sized packets to be sent over different bandwidth
WAN links.
If we have a 64kbps ISDN link and our voice packet is in
the queue behind a 1500 byte FTP packet we have a
problem because the maximum latency for voice is around
200mS. This doesnt give us much to play with if there are
several more WAN hops for our voice packet to traverse.

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Link Fragmentation and

Interleaving LFI
The solution is to use LFI to cut-up the larger packets so that the
priority packets can be interleaved with fragments of larger packets.
You can specify the maximum amount of time in milliseconds that
each fragment can take. This will determine the size of the fragment
LFI uses PPP to handle the reassembly

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Compressed Real-Time Transport

Protocol
RTP is the Internet-standard protocol for the transport of real-time
data, including audio and video.
Compressed Real-Time Transport Protocol, or CRTP, is used on a
link-by-link basis to compress the IP/UDP/RTP header. In a packet
voice environment when framing speech samples every 20
milliseconds; this scenario generates a payload of 20 bytes. The
total packet size comprises an IP header (20 bytes), a UDP header (8
bytes), and an RTP header (12 bytes) combined with a payload of 20
bytes.
It is evident that the size of the header is twice the size of the
payload. When generating packets every 20 milliseconds on a slow
link, the header consumes a large portion of the bandwidth. To avoid
the unnecessary consumption of available bandwidth, CRTP is used
on a link-by-link basis.
This compression scheme reduces the IP/UDP/RTP header to 2 bytes
most of the time when no UDP checksums are being sent or 4 bytes
when UDP checksums are used.
Note: Cisco only recommends using cRTP with links lower than 768
Kbps, unless the router is running at a low CPU utilization rate.
Monitor the router's CPU utilization and disable cRTP if it's above
75%.
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Questions
?

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