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Quality of Service
Network-based applications and traffic are growing at a high rate, producing an
ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and network capacity. For obvious reasons,
bandwidth and capacity cannot be expanded infinitely, requiring that bandwidth-
demanding services be delivered over existing infrastructure, without incurring
additional expensive investments. The next logical means of ensuring optimal
use of existing resources are Quality of Service (QoS ) mechanisms for congestion
management and avoidance.
Quality of Service refers to the capability of a network device to provide better ser-
vice to selected network traffic. This is achieved by shaping the traffic and process-
ing higher priority traffic before lower priority traffic.
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STOP! Do not change any Quality of Service settings unless
instructed to do so by the ISP.
Traffic Priority
Traffic Priority manages and avoid traffic congestion by defining inbound and out-
bound priority rules for each device on the Router. These rules determine the pri-
ority that packets, traveling through the device, will receive. QoS parameters (DSCP
marking and packet priority) are set per packet, on an application basis.
QoS can be configured using flexible rules, according to the following parameters:
• Source/destination IP address, MAC address, or host name
• Device
• Source/destination ports
• Limit the rule for specific days and hours
The Router supports two priority marking methods for packet prioritization:
• DSCP
• 802.1p Priority
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