Quality of Service (QoS): An Overview

Quality of Service (QoS) can be defined as any technology that manages data traffic with the aim of reducing packet loss, latency, and jitter on the network. It can control and manage network resources by setting priorities for particular types of data on the network.

Enterprise networks require to provide prediction and measurement services like applications, including voice, video, and delay-sensitive-data. The majority of organizations use Quality of Service in order to meet the traffic requirements of sensitive applications, including real-time voice and video, and to prevent the degradation of quality caused by packet loss, delay, and jitter.

Organizations can easily achieve Quality of Service with the help of specific tools and techniques like jitter buffer and traffic shaping. For several organizations, Quality of Service is included in the service-level agreement along with their service provider to guarantee a specific level of performance. Now, let’s check out QoS parameters:

QoS Parameters

Organizations can measure QoS by using various parameters, including
Packet loss: It happens when network links become congested as well as routers and switches begin to drop packets. When packets started dropping during real-time communication like voice or video calls, these sessions can experience jitter and gaps in speech.

Jitter: It is the result of network congestion, timing drift, and route changes. The maximum number of jitter can degrade the quality of voice as well as video communication.

Latency: It is the time when it takes a packet to travel from one source to another. It should be close to zero. If a voice over Internet Protocol call has a high amount of latency, it can experience echo and overlapping audio.

Bandwidth: It is the capacity of a network communications link that helps in transmitting the increased amount of data from one source to another in a specific time period. Quality of Service optimizes the network in order to manage bandwidth and set priorities for applications that require more resources as compared to others.

Mean opinion score: It is a metric of rate voice quality that can use a five-point scale along with a five indicating the highest quality.

Networking technologies, services, and application focus on delivering a Quality of Service (QoS) that is equal to or better than the legacy tools and equipment.