Differentiated services

This article is about communication networks. For be defined to offer, for example, low-loss or low-latency.
the design pattern for business applications, see DiffServ operates on the principle of traffic classifica-
Differentiated service (design pattern).
tion, where each data packet is placed into a limited num-
ber of traffic classes, rather than differentiating network
Differentiated services or DiffServ is a computer net- traffic based on the requirements of an individual flow.
working architecture that specifies a simple, scalable and Each router on the network is configured to differenti-
coarse-grained mechanism for classifying and managing ate traffic based on its class. Each traffic class can be
network traffic and providing quality of service (QoS) on managed differently, ensuring preferential treatment for
modern IP networks. DiffServ can, for example, be used higher-priority traffic on the network. The premise of
to provide low-latency to critical network traffic such as Diffserv is that complicated functions such as packet clas-
voice or streaming media while providing simple best- sification and policing can be carried out at the edge of the
effort service to non-critical services such as web traffic network by edge routers who then mark the packet to re-
or file transfers. ceive a particular type of per-hop behavior. Core router
DiffServ uses a 6-bit differentiated services code point functionality can then be kept simple. No classification
(DSCP) in the 8-bit differentiated services field (DS and policing is required. Such routers simply apply PHB
field) in the IP header for packet classification purposes. treatment to packets based on the marking. PHB treat-
The DS field and ECN field replace the outdated IPv4 ment is achieved by core routers using a combination of
TOS field.[1] scheduling policy and queue management policy.
While DiffServ does recommend a standardized set of
traffic classes,[2] the DiffServ architecture does not incor-
porate predetermined judgements of what types of traffic
1 Background should be given priority treatment. DiffServ simply pro-
vides a framework to allow classification and differenti-
Since modern data networks carry many different types ated treatment. The standard traffic classes (discussed
of services, including voice, video, streaming music, web below) serve to simplify interoperability between differ-
pages and email, many of the proposed QoS mechanisms ent networks and different vendors’ equipment.
that allowed these services to co-exist were both com-
plex and failed to scale to meet the demands of the public
Internet. In December 1998, the IETF published RFC
2474 - Definition of the Differentiated services field (DS 3 DiffServ domain
field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 headers, which replaced the
IPv4 TOS field with the DS field. In the DS field, a A group of routers that implement common, administra-
range of eight values (Class Selectors) is used for back- tively defined DiffServ policies are referred to as a Diff-
ward compatibility with the IP precedence specification Serv domain.
in the former TOS field. Today, DiffServ has largely sup-
planted TOS and other layer-3 QoS mechanisms, such as
integrated services (IntServ), as the primary architecture
routers use to provide different levels of service.
4 Classification and marking
Network traffic entering a DiffServ domain is subjected
to classification and conditioning. Traffic may be clas-
2 Traffic management mechanisms sified by many different parameters, such as source ad-
dress, destination address or traffic type and assigned to
DiffServ is a coarse-grained, class-based mechanism for a specific traffic class. Traffic classifiers may honor any
traffic management. In contrast, IntServ is a fine-grained, DiffServ markings in received packets or may elect to ig-
flow-based mechanism. DiffServ relies on a mechanism nore or override those markings. Because network opera-
to classify and mark packets as belonging to a specific tors want tight control over volumes and type of traffic in
class. DiffServ-aware routers implement per-hop behav- a given class, it is very rare that the network honors mark-
iors (PHBs), which define the packet-forwarding proper- ings at the ingress to the DiffServ domain. Traffic in each
ties associated with a class of traffic. Different PHBs may class may be further conditioned by subjecting the traffic

1
2 4 CLASSIFICATION AND MARKING

to rate limiters, traffic policers or shapers.[3] Expedited Forwarding PHB. However Voice Admit traf-
The Per-Hop Behavior is determined by the DS field fic is also admitted by the network using a Call Admission
of the IP header. The DS field contains a 6-bit Control (CAC) procedure. The recommended DSCP for
Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) value.[4] voice admit is 101100B (44 or 2CH).
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) occupies the
least-significant 2 bits of the IPv4 Type of Service field 4.4 Assured Forwarding
(TOS) and IPv6 Traffic Class field (TC).[5][6][7]
In theory, a network could have up to 64 (i.e. 26 ) differ- The IETF defines the Assured Forwarding behavior in
ent traffic classes using different DSCPs. The DiffServ RFC 2597 and RFC 3260. Assured forwarding allows
RFCs recommend, but do not require, certain encodings. the operator to provide assurance of delivery as long as
This gives a network operator great flexibility in defining the traffic does not exceed some subscribed rate. Traffic
traffic classes. In practice, however, most networks use that exceeds the subscription rate faces a higher probabil-
the following commonly defined Per-Hop Behaviors: ity of being dropped if congestion occurs.
The AF behavior group defines four separate AF classes
• Default PHB—which is typically best-effort traffic where all have the same priority. Within each class, pack-
ets are given a drop precedence (high, medium or low,
• Expedited Forwarding (EF) PHB—dedicated to where higher precedence means more dropping). The
low-loss, low-latency traffic combination of classes and drop precedence yields twelve
separate DSCP encodings from AF11 through AF43 (see
• Assured Forwarding (AF) PHB—gives assurance of table).
delivery under prescribed conditions
Some measure of priority and proportional fairness is de-
• Class Selector PHBs—which maintain backward fined between traffic in different classes. Should conges-
compatibility with the IP Precedence field. tion occur between classes, the traffic in the higher class
is given priority. Rather than using strict priority queu-
ing, more balanced queue servicing algorithms such as
4.1 Default Forwarding fair queuing or weighted fair queuing (WFQ) are likely
to be used. If congestion occurs within a class, the pack-
A Default PHB (a.k.a. Default Forwarding (DF) PHB[8] ) ets with the higher drop precedence are discarded first.
is the only required behavior. Essentially, any traffic To prevent issues associated with tail drop, more sophis-
that does not meet the requirements of any of the other ticated drop selection algorithms such as random early
defined classes is placed in the default PHB. Typically, detection (RED) are often used.
the default PHB has best-effort forwarding characteris-
tics. The recommended DSCP for the default PHB is
000000B (0). 4.5 Class Selector
Prior to DiffServ, IPv4 networks could use the Prece-
4.2 Expedited Forwarding dence field in the TOS byte of the IPv4 header to mark
priority traffic. The TOS octet and IP precedence were
The IETF defines Expedited Forwarding behavior in RFC not widely used. The IETF agreed to reuse the TOS octet
3246. The EF PHB has the characteristics of low delay, as the DS field for DiffServ networks. In order to main-
low loss and low jitter. These characteristics are suitable tain backward compatibility with network devices that
for voice, video and other realtime services. EF traffic still use the Precedence field, DiffServ defines the Class
is often given strict priority queuing above all other traf- Selector PHB.
fic classes. Because an overload of EF traffic will cause The Class Selector code points are of the form 'xxx000'.
queuing delays and affect the jitter and delay tolerances The first three bits are the IP precedence bits. Each IP
within the class, EF traffic is often strictly controlled precedence value can be mapped into a DiffServ class.
through admission control, policing and other mecha- CS0 equals to IP precedence 0, CS1 to IP precedence 1,
nisms. Typical networks will limit EF traffic to no more and so on. If a packet is received from a non-DiffServ
than 30%—and often much less—of the capacity of a aware router that used IP precedence markings, the Diff-
link . The recommended DSCP for expedited forward- Serv router can still understand the encoding as a Class
ing is 101110B (46 or 2EH). Selector code point.

4.3 Voice Admit 4.6 Commonly used DSCP values

The IETF defines Voice Admit behavior in RFC 5865. List of the commonly used DSCP values described in
The Voice Admit PHB has identical characteristics to the RFC 2475.
7.1 DiffServ Management RFCs 3

5 Design considerations • RFC 3140—Per hop behavior identification codes

(Obsoletes RFC 2836)
Under DiffServ, all the policing and classifying is done at
the boundaries between DiffServ domains. This means • RFC 3246—An expedited forwarding PHB (Obso-
that in the core of the Internet, routers are unhindered letes RFC 2598)
by the complexities of collecting payment or enforcing
• RFC 3247—Supplemental information for the new
agreements. That is, in contrast to IntServ, DiffServ re-
definition of the EF PHB (expedited forwarding per-
quires no advance setup, no reservation, and no time-
hop behavior)
consuming end-to-end negotiation for each flow.
The details of how individual routers deal with the DS • RFC 3260—New Terminology and Clarifications
field is configuration specific, therefore it is difficult to for Diffserv (Updates RFC 2474, RFC 2475 and
predict end-to-end behaviour. This is complicated fur- RFC 2597)
ther if a packet crosses two or more DiffServ domains
before reaching its destination. From a commercial view- • RFC 4594—Configuration Guidelines for DiffServ
point this means that it is impossible to sell different Service Classes
classes of end-to-end connectivity to end users, as one
provider’s Gold packet may be another’s Bronze. Diff- • RFC 5865—A differentiated services code point
Serv or any other IP based QoS marking does not ensure (DSCP) for capacity-admitted traffic (updates RFC
quality of the service or a specified service-level agree- 4542 and RFC 4594)
ment (SLA). By marking the packets, the sender indi-
cates that it wants the packets to be treated as a specific
service, but it can only hope that this happens. It is up to 7.1 DiffServ Management RFCs
all the service providers and their routers in the path to
ensure that their policies will take care of the packets in • RFC 3289—Management information base for the
an appropriate fashion. differentiated services architecture
The problem addressed by DiffServ does not exist in a • RFC 3290—An informal management model for
system that has enough capacity to carry all traffic. differentiated services routers

• RFC 3317—Differentiated services quality of ser-

6 Bandwidth broker vice policy information base

RFC 2638 from IETF defines the entity of the Bandwidth

Broker in the framework of DiffServ. A Bandwidth Bro- 8 See also
ker is an agent that has some knowledge of an organiza-
tion’s priorities and policies and allocates bandwidth with
• Class of service
respect to those policies. In order to achieve an end-to-
end allocation of resources across separate domains, the • Teletraffic engineering
Bandwidth Broker managing a domain will have to com-
municate with its adjacent peers, which allows end-to-end
services to be constructed out of purely bilateral agree-
ments. 9 References
[1] RFC 3260
7 DiffServ RFCs [2] RFC 4594

• RFC 2474—Definition of the differentiated services [3] RFC 2597 Section 3

field (DS field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 headers
[4] RFC 2474
• RFC 2475—An architecture for differentiated ser-
vices [5] RFC 6088

• RFC 2597—Assured forwarding PHB group [6] Worldwide. “Implementing Quality of Service Policies
with DSCP”. Cisco. Retrieved 2010-10-16.
• RFC 2983—Differentiated services and tunnels
[7] Filtering DSCP
• RFC 3086—Definition of differentiated services per
domain behaviors and rules for their specification [8] RFC 4594
4 11 EXTERNAL LINKS

10 Further reading
• John Evans; Clarence Filsfils (2007). Deploying
IP and MPLS QoS for Multiservice Networks: The-
ory and Practice. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 0-12-
370549-5.
• Kalevi Kilkki (1999). Differentiated services for the
Internet. Macmillan Technical Publishing. ISBN 1-
57870-132-5.

11 External links
• IETF DiffServ Working Group page

• Cisco Whitepaper—DiffServ-The Scalable End-to-

End Quality of Service Model

• ACM SIGCOMM'09 paper-Modeling and Under-

standing End-to-End Class of Service Policies in
Operational Networks: proposes a practical model
for extracting DiffServ policies

• Cisco: Implementing Quality of Service Policies

with DSCP

• Cisco: DiffServ QoS recommendations, based on

the guideline from RFC 4594

• Blocking ASPROX_SQL injection attacks by con-

figuring Cisco Routers, CiscoNews, blogs.
 5

12 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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• Differentiated services Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiated_services?oldid=734657002 Contributors: Aldie, Nealmcb,
Michael Hardy, MartinHarper, Glenn, Echoray, Chris Roy, Wolfkeeper, CyborgTosser, AlistairMcMillan, Alvestrand, Necrothesp, Grunt,
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