ZyXEL Communications 4728F User Manual

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XGS-4526/4528F/4728F User’s Guide
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Differentiated Services
This chapter shows you how to configure Differentiated Services (DiffServ) on the 
Switch.
40.1  DiffServ Overview 
Quality of Service (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 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. 
40.1.1  DSCP and Per-Hop Behavior 
DiffServ defines a new DS (Differentiated Services) field to replace the Type of 
Service (ToS) field in the IP header. The DS field contains a 6-bit DSCP field which 
can define up to 64 service levels and the remaining 2 bits are defined as currently 
unused (CU). The following figure illustrates the DS field. 
Figure 178   DiffServ: Differentiated Service 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. 
The DSCP value determines the PHB (Per-Hop Behavior), that each packet gets as 
it is forwarded across the DiffServ network. Based on the marking rule different 
DSCP (6 bits) 
CU (2 bits)