Network Quality of Service (QoS)

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 sales@whitehelm.com requesting more information.

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