Cisco IOS Quality of Service

The subject matter of this paper is the Cisco IOS QoS software that is programmed to provide features and solutions for addressing the diverse needs of voice, video, and data applications. Every organization needs a strong communications network to serve as a transport for a various applications, including delay sensitive voice, and bandwidth intensive video. Though these business applications add to the value and enhance every business process but they also stretch network capabilities and resources. To ensure safe transactions, it is essential for networks to provide secure, predictable, measurable, and sometimes guaranteed services to these applications. In other words, businesses must achieve the required Quality of Service (QoS) for running an infrastructure that truly serves the entire business. Using Cisco IOS QoS, one can effectively control bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss to ensure efficient, predictable services for business-critical applications. This software is suitable for use by small to medium businesses, enterprises, and service providers alike. This feature-rich software allows users to build reliable networks as per the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Integrated Services (IntServ) model or the Differentiated Services (DiffServ) model. Apart from this important feature, the Cisco IOS QoS also offer other value-added functionality, such as Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR), for classifying traffic on an application basis, Cisco IOS IP Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for end-to-end QoS measurements, and Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) signaling for admission control and reservation of resources.