When we use our office computers and the telephone, applications send data by submitting it to the operating system, to be carried across the network. Once data is submitted to the operating system, it becomes network traffic.
Network QoS refers to the ability of the network to handle this traffic so it meets the service needs of certain applications. This requires fundamental traffic handling mechanisms in the network, the ability to identify traffic that is entitled to these mechanisms and the ability to control these mechanisms.
The primary goal of QoS is to provide priority including: dedicated bandwidth, controlled jitter and latency (required by some real-time and interactive traffic), and improved loss characteristics.
Also important is making sure that providing priority for one or more flows does not make other flows fail. QoS technologies provide the elemental building blocks that will be used for future business applications in campus, WAN, and service provider networks.
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