QoS

Quality of Service

Presentation_ID © 1999, Cisco Systems, Inc. 1

 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

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 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%.

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 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 1 ISP 2

Multihomed WAN
or Redundant Core Layer

Si HSRP Si

STP

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 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 video’s 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 Cisco’s 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 Catalyst
Match on Description
2950 3550
access-group X X Access group
A specific DSCP
ip dscp X X value or a list of
values
A specific IP
ip precedence X precedence value or
• The class map is used to associate a list of values

one of several attributes with a QoS any X Any packet

treatment that should be given to
that traffic. class-map X A nested class-map

• The attributes available vary

depending on the hardware destination-
address
X
A destination MAC
address
platform.
input-interface Select an input
X
interface to match on
Example:
Multiprotocol Label
Switch(config)# class-map match-any critical mpls X
Switching values
Switch(config-cmap)# match interface fastethernet 0/1
Match on protocol
protocol X
type
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 A source MAC
X
address

vlan X VLAN ID
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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
ACL’s 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
Relay’s 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: Interface Buffer Weight Determined by:

•Source and destination address Resources •Requested QoS (IP Procedure, RSVP)
•Protocol •Frame Relay FECN, BECN, DE
•Session identifier (port/socket) (For FR Traffic)
•Flow throughput (weighted-fair)
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Class-Based Weighted Fair Queuing

Class 1 Interface
Traffic is 4 BW=64
grouped into Weight=32
user-defined
classes. 2 1 4 3
Class 2
3 BW=128 WFQ
Dispatch
Weight=16
4 3 2 1

2 1 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 v1.1—13-16 22

Low Latency Queuing

V V Interface
Priority Class 1 1

Class 1 2 2 PQ V V
4 3 2 1 1

Class 2 3 3 3 3
WFQ
Class 3 4 4 4 4

Class-Default 7 6 5

• LLQ provides for strict priority queuing of voice

traffic (V).

© 2002, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. BCRAN v1.1—13-27 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 router’s 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 doesn’t give us much to play with if there are
several more WAN hops for our voice packet to traverse.

64 256
1 Byte 128 Bytes 512 Bytes 1024 Bytes 1500 Bytes
Bytes Bytes
56 kbps 143 us 9 ms 18 ms 36 ms 72 ms 144 ms 214 ms
64 kbps 125 us 8 ms 16 ms 32 ms 64 ms 126 ms 187 ms
128 kbps 62.5 us 4 ms 8 ms 16 ms 32 ms 64 ms 93 ms
256 kbps 31 us 2 ms 4 ms 8 ms 16 ms 32 ms 46 ms
512 kbps 15.5 us 1 ms 2 ms 4 ms 8 ms 16 ms 32 ms
768 kbps 10 us 640 us 1.28 ms 2.56 ms 5.12 ms 10.24 ms 15 ms
1536 kbps 5 us 320 us 640 us 1.28 ms 2.56 ms 5.12 ms 7.5 ms

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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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