Quality of service is widely used for networks as it is a set of standards and mechanisms which is used in almost every industry. Quality of service is being widely used as it ensure that all the critical applications perform better. These mechanisms ensure that administrators can easily use existing resources rather than expanding their current networks. Earlier, quality meant that all applications were given equal preference and therefore, this started resulting in variations, delays and other technical problems. With time, Quality of service came into existence which gave way to the concept that some applications are more critical than others. This actually means that some traffic needs special treatment and should be cleared before moving onto other applications.
The main objective of using Quality of service (QoS) is to ensure that some applications are given special treatment along with sufficient bandwidth. Quality of service also controls latency and jitter besides making sure that no data is lost.
Models of Quality of Service
? Integrated services
? Differentiated services
Based on technical considerations, these models make sure that preferential treatment is given to certain applications. Based on different mechanisms, there are different categories of Quality of service.
Categories of Quality of Service
? Admission control – This category determines the specific applications and users that are entitled to resources of the network. To be specific, this category makes sure how, when and by whom the network resources will be used.
? Traffic control – This category shapes traffic and takes into account priority to classify, schedule and market packets. These mechanisms divide traffic into various classes and controls their delivery to the network.
Here is a list of different network characteristics that are managed by Quality of service :
? Latency – It handles the delay in transmission of data
? Bandwidth – It makes sure that the bandwidth is not compromized
? Jitter – It makes sure that there is not much variation in latency
? Reliability – Quality of service ensures that no data is lost during transmission
Benefits of Quality of service
Through quality of service, network administrators can make sure that mission critical applications are taken care of first. This helps in reducing any time delay and all transactions can be easily processed in an acceptable amount of time. Moreover, this service can also be used to easily manage user data protocol traffic. This protocol is unreliable as it does not receive any feedback from the network and it is better to keep it monitored. Moreover, user data protocol can not detect network congestion. Through Quality of Service (QoS), administrators can easily manage control of applications relying on user data protocol. These usually include multimedia applications which require high bandwidth even when there is network congestion. Here is a list of all the other benefits that Quality of service provides :
? Improving the overall user experience.
? It uses the existing resources optimally. Therefore, expansion or upgradation is not required, which reduces costs.
? It ensures that time sensitive and critical applications are handled first.
? Administrators are able to control network resources and manage them from a business point of view.