The Need for QoS

Users  of a widely scattered VPNs  do not usually care about the network topology or  the high level of security/encryption or firewalls that handle their traffic. They don't  care if the network implementers  have incorporated IPSec  tunnels or GRE tunnels. What they care about is  something more fundamental, such as:

Do I get acceptable response times  when I access my mission  critical applications from  a remote office?

Acceptance levels for delays vary.  While a user would be willing to put up with a few additional  seconds for a file transfer to complete, the same user would have less tolerance  for similar delays when accessing a database or  when running voice over an IP data network.

QoS aims to ensure that your mission  critical traffic has acceptable performance. In the real world where bandwidth is finite and diverse applications  from videoconferencing  to ERP database lookups must all vie for scarce  resources, QoS becomes  a vital tool to ensure  that all applications can coexist and function at  acceptable levels of performance.

This is  achieve by using techniques such as:-

• Packet classification
• Bandwidth  management
• Congestion avoidance

Summary

Many tools are available in the marketplace today to help you manage your WAN links. These range from  QoS tools for Traffic Classification, Policing / Shaping, Bandwidth  Allocation, and Congestion  Avoidance.

Please call 0870 421 4023 to find out more about  the benefits of QoS solutions,  or e-mail qos.team@Whitehelm.com requesting more information.