What is Network Quality of Service (QoS) and How Can I Achieve It?

Quality of service (QoS), in network and telephony, parlance has both specific and less precise but more practical meanings. In general, quality of service can be viewed as measuring the performance of a network or telephone service, thereby providing an indication of its quality.

“Quality of Service (QoS) can be defined as a set of techniques/parameters to manage network resources,” the WhatsUp Gold Bandwidth Monitoring and Quality of Service webpage stated. “With no policies in place, network channels function on a best-effort delivery basis – that is, all the traffic across a channel would have equal priority, and so traffic packets for all applications/servers/users have the same chance of being delivered, or being dropped. In other words, since all traffic has equal priority, administrators have no flexibility in controlling traffic flow.”

QoS Solutions

Another definition that speaks to specific quality of service tools such as traffic prioritization solutions, as well as bandwidth monitoring and traffic shaping tools.

And speaking of QoS technologies, such as traffic prioritization, the effective use of these solutions should guarantee or nearly guarantee the desired quality of service outcome. Not all applications merit this type of technology and investment, and not all enterprises need this high level of QoS.

For the purpose of this blog, we’ll focus on quality of service as a measure of performance and talk about ways to improve quality of service using network monitoring and IT Infrastructure Monitoring (ITIM) tools.

For many networks, measuring your performance of key applications and systems as well as network links, and comparing that to service goals, will allow you to provision your network such that you achieve, in general, basic quality of service goals. In some sense, IT is overprovisioning the network so that traffic spikes don't degrade the performance such that the quality measurably suffers.

This certainly requires an investment in network infrastructure and management, and through proper monitoring, network professionals will know when traffic increases to the extent where quality begins to be an issue.

ITIM and QoS

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (ITIM) offers a general view of network performance, as well as the performance of particular applications and network segments. Network professionals can also track quality of service type metrics such as packet loss, jitter, bit rate and delay.

Some applications in enterprise networks demand high levels of quality of service. For instance, your shop may be using voice over IP and you don't want your end users and particularly your CEO to have poor voice quality, nor do you want your customers to wonder what the heck is wrong with your phone system. Even without dedicated QoS solutions, a properly provisioned, monitored and managed network should provide more than adequate service for your VoIP applications.

ITIM also helps network professionals manage the network so the critical applications always have the quality they demand.

With QoS policies, network admins can allocate bandwidth to business-critical applications like CRM, VoIP, databases etc,, and conversely, ensuring available bandwidth is not encroached by gaming, streaming and other bandwidth-sucking, non-business applications.

Apply QoS Policies

By default, each network channel operates on a best-effort basis. That means every application is given equal priority, whether it is a business-critical VoIP service or a user streaming video content. In contrast, QoS polices ensure business-critical applications get sufficient bandwidth.

QoS and Network Planning

Having QoS policies as well as the ability to measure actual performance is key to proper network design. As stated in the Network Traffic Monitoring and Network Capacity Planning webpage, “Quality of service (QoS) is a vital feature in network capacity planning. All links have congestion points and have periodic spikes in traffic. QoS polices are essential to ensure traffic spikes/congestion points are smoothed out, and more bandwidth is allocated to critical network traffic. Without proper QoS policies in place, all traffic has equal priority, and it is impossible to ensure your business-critical applications are getting sufficient bandwidth. For instance, without detailed knowledge of the type of traffic passing through a network, it is not possible to predict if QoS parameters for services like VoIP are meeting target levels. Network traffic monitoring will give you the visibility that you need to properly plan network capacity and ensure QoS.”

Guarantee QoS with WhatsUp Gold

WhatsUp Gold’s bandwidth monitoring tool offers bandwidth monitoring and management based on QoS policies. WhatsUp Gold can identify traffic trends, mark out traffic patterns (transient/seasonal spikes and valleys) and analyze network and application traffic. The information can be filtered based on hosts, interfaces, applications and traffic direction.

Additionally, WhatsUp Gold comes with comprehensive reporting features. The QoS policies can be monitored through class-based QoS reports, which offer a unified view and comparison of post-policy and pre-policy traffic. This allows administrators to study and manage QoS targets, as well as proactively identify saturation issues.

QoS is a vital feature in network capacity planning. All links have congestion points and have periodic spikes in traffic. QoS polices are essential to ensure traffic spikes/congestion points are smoothed out and more bandwidth is allocated to critical network traffic. Without proper QoS policies in place, all traffic has equal priority and it is impossible to ensure your business-critical applications are getting sufficient bandwidth.

For instance, without detailed knowledge of the type of traffic passing through a network, it is not possible to predict if QoS parameters for services like VoIP are meeting target levels. Network traffic monitoring will give you the visibility that you need to properly plan network capacity and ensure QoS.

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