Deploying IP and MPLS QoS for Multiservice Networks

Preface

Traditionally, Internet Protocol or IP networks have only offered a “best effort” delivery service for IP traffic; in these best-effort networks all traffic is treated equally. The service requirements – or more specifically service level agreement (SLA) requirements – of, voice, video, and mission critical data applications, for example, are not the same. Consequently, “best effort” IP networks have not been able to provide optimal support for multiservice applications with different SLA requirements.

Broadly speaking “quality of service” or QOS (either pronounced “Q-O-S” or “kwos”) is the term used to describe the science of engineering a network to make it work well for applications by treating traffic from applications differently ...