Understanding QoS

QoS in the Service Provider Network

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-1
Objectives
• Describe the Cisco IP NGN Architecture
• Describe the QoS Issues in Converged Networks
• Describe the need to classify traffic into different Traffic Classes
• Describe applying QoS Policies on the Traffic Classes
• Describe the service level agreement concept
• Describe the service level agreement measuring points in the network
• Describe best-effort and IntServ and DiffServ models
• Describes the IntServ model
• Describe the DiffServ model
• Describe the DSCP field in the IP header
• Describe the different QoS mechanisms that can be applied to an
interface based on the DiffServ Model
• Describe using MQC to enable the QoS mechanisms

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-2
Cisco IP NGN Architecture
• The Cisco IP NGN is a next-generation service provider infrastructure
for video, mobile, and cloud or managed services.
• The Cisco IP NGN provides an all-IP network for services and
applications, regardless of access type.
Mobile Residential Business
Access Access Access

Application Layer

Services Layer
Mobile Video Cloud
Services Services Services

IP Infrastructure Layer

Access Aggregation IP Edge Core

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-3
Cisco IP NGN Infrastructure Layer
• The IP infrastructure layer provides connectivity between customer and
service provider.
• End-to-end QoS must be implemented to satisfy the requirements for
the most demanding services.

Access
Aggregation
IP Edge
Core
Residential

Mobile Users

Business

IP Infrastructure Layer

Access Aggregation IP Edge Core

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-4
Quality Issues in Converged Networks
• Lack of bandwidth: Multiple flows compete for a limited amount of
bandwidth. The maximum available bandwidth equals the bandwidth of
the weakest link.
• End-to-end delay: Packets must traverse many network devices and
links that add to the overall delay. The delay is the sum of propagation,
processing, and queuing delays in the network.
• Variation of delay (jitter): Subsequent packets may have different delays
and that difference can lead to quality issues.
• Packet loss: Packets may have to be dropped when a link is congested.
Packet loss is commonly caused by tail drop when the output queue on
the router is full.

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-5
QoS and Traffic Classes
• Not all applications require the same treatment.
• The network needs the ability to provide better or “special” service to a
set of users and applications (to the detriment of other users and
applications).
• QoS policy must comply with traffic-specific requirements.

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Applying QoS Policies on Traffic Classes
Voice
Step1: Identify traffic Video
according to application. ERP
E-commerce
Web browsing

Step 2: Put identified traffic Premium class

into classes. Gold class
Best effort
QoS Policy
Step3: Create policies to be
Premium class: Absolute priority, no drop
applied on traffic classes. Gold class: Critical priority, no drop
Best effort: No priority, drop when needed

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-7
Applying QoS Policies on Traffic Classes
Example:
Voice, database, and web browsing are classified into
premium, gold, and best effort classes, respectively:

QoS Policy
Premium class: 160 kb/s, priority queue
Gold class: minimum 80 kb/s bandwidth, mid-
priority queue
Best effort: no guarantee, low-priority queue

CE Router PE Router

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-8
Service Level Agreement
• Service quality offered by service provider can be measured with
statistics such as throughput, usage, percentage of loss, and uptime.
• Service providers formalize these expectations within service level
agreements (SLAs), which clearly state the acceptable bounds of
network performance.

Example of SLAs offered by an ISP:

Class RTT (ms) Delay (ms) Availability (%) Jitter (ms)
Premium 40 <150 99.99 <8
Gold 45 <200 99.9 <15
Silver 50 <500 99 <30

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-9
SLA Measurement Points
• PE-to-PE measurements (packet loss, delay, jitter) are commonly done
by the SP.
• CE-to-CE measurement is available for the SP when using managed
CE.
• Application to application (packet loss, jitter, delay) can be measured by
the enterprise.
Enterprise Enterprise
QoS Domain QoS Domain

CE P P PE CE
PE

PE to PE (PoP to PoP)
CE to CE (End to End)
Application to Application (example: Phone Call)

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Models for Implementing QoS
There are three models for providing the differentiated levels of
network service required in converged networks: IntServ,
DiffServ, and best effort.
• Best-effort service is the model inherent in IP networks from the
beginning of packet transport networks. By default, no QoS is applied on
any packets.
• Integrated services (IntServ) is based on signaling events from
endpoints requesting special treatment for packets that are delivered to
a network.
• Differentiated services (DiffServ) divides traffic into classes and applies
a different level of service for each class.

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IntServ Model and RSVP
• The IntServ model was introduced to guarantee predictable behavior in
a network for applications that need special bandwidth or delay
requirements, or both.
• Using Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP), the endpoints signal the
required bandwidth and delay to the network.

Phone A Phone B
Phone A Calling Phone B, Codec G711u

Reserving: 80 kb/s,
Low Latency Queue

Requesting: 80 kb/s
Reserving: 80 kb/s,
of Bandwidth,
Low Latency Queue
Maximum 150 ms
Delay

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RSVP Interface Queuing
Bandwidth is allocated for 100%
RSVP flows. It can be altered
with the bandwidth value
command on an interface.

Total Interface Bandwidth

75%

RSVP flows are assigned to

RSVP – Protected Flows

Bandwidth Available for
the priority queue; all other
50%

(by Default 75%)

traffic is scheduled using
WRED and WFQ mechanisms.

RSVP flows will be admitted 25%

until all available bandwidth for
RSVP has been consumed.

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Differentiated Services Model
• Network traffic is identified by the appropriate class.
• There is different treatment regarding traffic for each traffic class.
• This model can be very scalable.
• Traffic classification is performed closest to the source of traffic;
classified packets are marked using the DSCP field in IP packets.
• Having traffic divided into classes becomes simple to manage in the
core; every hop in the core can perform actions based on traffic classes.
• QoS actions that are based hops are called per-hop behavior (PHB).

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DSCP Field
Version ToS Len ID Flags/ TTL Proto FCS IP-SA IP-DA DATA
Length 1 Byte Offset

1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0

IP Precedence ECN

DSCP
• RFC 1812 defines first three bits of ToS bytes as IP Precedence.
• RFC 2474 replaces the ToS field (IPv4) or class field (IPv6) with the
Differentiated Services (DS) field, where the six high-order bits are used
for the differentiated services code point (DSCP), and the remaining two
bits are used for explicit congestion notification.
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Per-Hop Behavior
Per-Hop Behavior Value Service
Default 000 XXX Best effort
Expedited Forwarding (EF) 101 110 Low delay
Assured Forwarding XXX XX0 Guaranteed bandwidth

Example of ToS byte (EF):

1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0

• IP Precedence field = 101 (bits 5-7)

• DSCP field = 101110 (bits 2-7)
• ECN field = 10 (bits 0-1)

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Per-Hop Behavior (Cont.)
Class Value Drop
Probability Value AF Value
AF1 001 dd 0 (dd)
AF2 010 dd 0 Low 01 AF11
AF3 011 dd 0 Medium 10 AF12

AF4 100 dd 0 High 11 Low

• Assured Forwarding (AF) PHB is used for guaranteed bandwidth

service (bits 5 to 7 of DSCP = 001, 010, 011, or 100).
• Packets requiring AF PHB should be marked with DSCP value
aaadd0, where aaa is the number of the class and dd is the drop
probability.

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QoS Actions on Interfaces, Based on DiffServ
Model
• On input interfaces, a class of packets should be marked or “colored,”
so it can be quickly recognized on the rest of the network. Also, it may
be necessary to limit traffic on input interfaces.
• On output interfaces, some traffic may need to be remarked, and traffic
congestion avoidance policies may be used, to avoid premium class
packets being dropped. Shaping and policing is common in service
provider networks, to avoid dropping or queuing packets that exceed the
predefined limits.
• Marking traffic
• Classification of traffic • Avoiding congestion
• Marking traffic actions
• Policing (if needed) • Shaping
• Policing

Input Output
interface interface

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Applying QoS Policies to Traffic Classes:
Cisco IOS XR Software
Divide traffic into classes: Create policy and apply to
class-map Premium
the interface:
match protocol rtp policy-map policy1

class-map Gold class Premium

match access group ipv4 100 priority 160

class-map class-default class Gold

match protocol http bandwidth 80

class class-default

interface GigabitEthernet 0/1/0/9

service-policy output policy1

© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-19
Summary
• To provide the highest level of service quality, QoS must be implemented across
all areas of the service provider network
• Each hop in the network adds to the overall delay
• Not all applications require the same treatment
• There are three basic steps that are involved in implementing QoS on a network
• Service providers formalize customer‘s expectations within SLA
• There are several points in the network where SLA measurements can take place
• There are three models for implementing QoS in a network
• In the IntServ model, the application requests a specific kind of service from the
network before sending data
• DiffServ was designed to overcome the limitations of both the best-effort and
IntServ models
• DiffServ uses the Differentiated Services (DS) field in the IP header to mark
packets according to their classification
• Marking should be performed as close to the network edge as possible
• The MQC is a CLI structure that allows you to create policies and attach these
policies to interfaces
© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-20
© 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. SPCORE v1.01—3-21