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IEEE 802.1p specifies the user priority field and defines up to eight separate traffic types. The
following table describes the traffic types defined in the IEEE 802.1d standard (which incorporates
the 802.1p).
Table 51 IEEE 802.1p Priority Level and Traffic Type
PRIORITY
TRAFFIC TYPE
LEVEL
Level 7
Typically used for network control traffic such as router configuration messages.
Level 6
Typically used for voice traffic that is especially sensitive to jitter (jitter is the
variations in delay).
Level 5
Typically used for video that consumes high bandwidth and is sensitive to jitter.
Level 4
Typically used for controlled load, latency-sensitive traffic such as SNA (Systems
Network Architecture) transactions.
Level 3
Typically used for "excellent effort" or better than best effort and would include
important business traffic that can tolerate some delay.
Level 2
This is for "spare bandwidth".
Level 1
This is typically used for non-critical "background" traffic such as bulk transfers that
are allowed but that should not affect other applications and users.
Level 0
Typically used for best-effort traffic.
DiffServ
QoS is used to prioritize source-to-destination traffic flows. All packets in the flow are given the
same priority. You can use CoS (class of service) to give different priorities to different packet
types.
DiffServ (Differentiated Services) is a class of service (CoS) model that marks packets so that they
receive specific per-hop treatment at DiffServ-compliant network devices along the route based on
the application types and traffic flow. Packets are marked with DiffServ Code Points (DSCPs)
indicating the level of service desired. This allows the intermediary DiffServ-compliant network
devices to handle the packets differently depending on the code points without the need to
negotiate paths or remember state information for every flow. In addition, applications do not have
to request a particular service or give advanced notice of where the traffic is going.
DSCP and Per-Hop Behavior
DiffServ defines a new Differentiated Services (DS) field to replace the Type of Service (TOS) field
in the IP header. The DS field contains a 2-bit unused field and a 6-bit DSCP field which can define
up to 64 service levels. The following figure illustrates the DS field.
DSCP is backward compatible with the three precedence bits in the ToS octet so that non-DiffServ
compliant, ToS-enabled network device will not conflict with the DSCP mapping.
DSCP (6 bits)
The DSCP value determines the forwarding behavior, the PHB (Per-Hop Behavior), that each packet
gets across the DiffServ network. Based on the marking rule, different kinds of traffic can be
marked for different kinds of forwarding. Resources can then be allocated according to the DSCP
values and the configured policies.
Chapter 10 Quality of Service (QoS)
Unused (2 bits)
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