Quality of Service – More than Improved Network Performance

Quality of Service (QoS) is the ability of the network to provide differing service levels to networked applications. These differing service levels define the appropriate network resources to meet the performance requirements of each application. Prior to QoS, application performance was often dictated by amount of available bandwidth on the network. Any non-conforming application on a network segment could easily consume all available bandwidth and cause each application traversing that segment to experience performance issues. The remedy for this situation was often an upgrade of bandwidth on the constrained network segment(s) utilized by the application. This unfortunately would only temporarily resolve the issue until either more applications were added to the network or an increase in application usage would again cause a network overrun.

Emerging technologies such as IP Telephony and IP Video have significantly changed the dynamics of the network. Voice and video are not tolerant of repeated packet drops or packet delay variations. These real-time applications demand true end-to-end performance guarantees that only QoS can provide. Once these technologies are implemented, network performance must be strictly controlled and bandwidth upgrades are no longer a viable option for resolving performance issues. Each active network device must be configured to be “aware” of the applications traversing the network and be capable of providing the appropriate service levels to each.

Enabling QoS on a network provides more than guaranteed service levels to your network applications. If leveraged properly, QoS can provide additional benefits such as cost savings, enhanced network capacity planning and proactive network application management.

Cost Savings:
If configured properly, QoS can dedicate network resources “on-demand” to those applications that require immediate response such as IP Telephony or mission critical ERP applications. Remaining bandwidth is utilized by traffic considered lower in priority such as e-mail or file transfers. When the mission critical traffic ceases, the dedicated network resources are automatically returned to lower priority applications until they are needed again. In this manner, the network can automatically adjust its resources to efficiently accommodate both high and low priority applications with available bandwidth. This allows the network to do more with less, thereby providing better service while reducing costs.

Capacity Planning:
A properly configured QoS infrastructure must inherently define the network resource requirements of each application. This implies that each application be profiled, or analyzed prior to deployment on the network to determine the application behavior related to bandwidth and end-user response time requirements. This analysis provides a predictive network impact assessment for the application and allows more accurate costing of required network resources. Often, application design flaws that cause an over-utilization of network resources or overall poor performance are identified in this analysis process and corrected prior to rollout. This early identification of application issues can minimize costly application deployment delays and reduce the amount of post-deployment application reworks.

Proactive Network Application Management
Due to the detailed application resource requirements defined within QoS on each network device, rogue applications are often automatically constrained on the network. With a properly configured QoS infrastructure, these applications automatically receive a “best effort” service with little impact to mission critical network traffic. This can provide better overall application performance for critical applications, cost avoidance by reducing the need for unnecessary network upgrades and reducing network support calls.

While QoS is a requirement for a converged voice and data network, it includes additional benefits that can help your organization. From improved network performance to cost avoidance to operation soundness, QoS can have a significant, positive impact to your network. 3KeyLogic has the experience and technical expertise to help you design, build and monitor your Quality of Service plan. Through careful analysis, we can build a network that is cost effective, efficient, more productive and provides users with improved performance. Click on Contact Us or call for more information.