Explaining QoS

Hi everyone!

In this post we will define the concept of QoS and how it is taken into account and included in a Data Center.

The QoS is the ability to manage the available bandwidth of the network, prioritizing or guaranteeing certain resources for critical services or for services with more demand, as needed, so that at the same time, a priority service has a greater bandwidth and a transmission speed than one less priority, guaranteeing that the users have a service adapted to their needs.This concept is very important for all business but specially for those who have critical services or assets that need to be accesed or served as soon as possible.

For more information about this concept: http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Quality_of_Service_Networking

In order to prioritize, first thing is to differentiate the various services or traffics, this segmentation can be done through VLANs, by which the switches can decide to what priority is given according to the VLAN to which the traffic belongs; Another method is through the DSCP field of the IPv4 header, by which we can obtain up to 6 different levels of QoS; MPLS networks can use MPLS protocol labels to differentiate up to 8 types of service, etc.

In general, the easiest and fastest way to deploy Quality of Service over a network using VLANs, using 802.1q standards to segment VLANs and 802.1p for the priorities.

Finally, what benefits does the application of QoS in our Data Center?

As we mentioned earlier, QoS guarantees that a critical and necessaryservice for the user, which has to be available and accessible quickly, can meet these requirements. If QoS is applied properly, a user will see reflected in his operative the quality and speed of the system, In other hand, it is an efficient way of use the network resources.

See you in future posts!