New Training: Select QoS Strategies

In this 7-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Jeff Kish explores how we design our networks with an end-to-end QoS policy in mind, including queueing techniques, traffic shaping and policing, and general QoS design principles. Watch this new Cisco training.

Watch the full course: Designing Cisco Enterprise Networks

This training includes:

• 7 videos

• 57 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Intro

• The Need for QoS

• The IntServ Model

• The DiffServ Model

• Classification and Marking

• Queuing and Scheduling

• Review and Quiz

Why Do I Need QoS Policies in My Network?

IT networks can handle an amazing amount of traffic, but there is still a limit to how much traffic they can handle. Network capacity can be improved by adding additional hardware, like switches and routers, to a network, but sometimes spending additional money on new hardware isn't always the answer. That's when network engineers might implement QoS policies.

QoS stands for quality of service. QoS policies control how much data can flow through a network at any given time. They also control what data has priority.

For instance, a network engineer might decide that network traffic produced by Skype should have a higher priority than web traffic. So, in this example, a Skype video call will always have the right of way in the packet queue in network switches before general web traffic.

That is only a crude example. QoS policies can be implemented for all types of reasons, but with QoS policies, network admins can ensure that applications, like Skype, continually work smoothly. QoS policies can help shape network traffic so that IT networks aren't flooded and become inoperable.