Quality of Service (QoS) is a data network solution that prioritises network traffic, to ensure that key traffic has precedence over less important traffic during times of congestion.
In order to have a great experience using the internet or any data service, all connected networks (LAN and WAN) must have a properly configured QoS solution to ensure that important traffic such as voice (VoIP/SIP) is not compromised by less important traffic. As shown in the above diagram critical traffic like voice may experience issues during periods of contention. Even short bursts of less important traffic (i.e emails) can interfere with critical traffic if not controlled properly.
We highly recommend the Nehos Broadband Managed routing solution in order to be able to correctly control the flow of traffic over your LAN and WAN network. Without properly controlling traffic between Nehos and your site and your equipment (servers, computers and handsets) and your gateway less important traffic on your LAN and over the WAN will interfere with more important traffic such as voice.
QoS solutions can only be implemented on an outbound interface of a router and therefore must take place on both ends of a connection. QoS solutions can only work reliably over a non contended broadband service such as our EoC or fibre service. Customers will find a much improved service using our managed router solution over “contended” services such as Nehos ADSL/NBN services but we can not guarantee that QoS queues will work flawlessly.
Setup
In order to configure your network for QoS we first must have a clear picture of the amount of bandwidth available in both directions of the connection (upload and download) for QoS Queues. This may require a detailed site survey to make recommendations on changes to control traffic throughout your network.
Measurements are done by Nehos network engineers to find out what the consistent throughput of a service is without seeing the service speed vary at all. This must be performed without any other network traffic for accurate results. If you require Nehos to re-tune your QoS service you will need to schedule a time with us to do this. You must ensure no traffic is active on the service at the time of the bandwidth test.
By default Nehos has 4 x pre-configured QoS queues available. This would look like 4 x pipes of various sizes that must fit within the big pipe (transit total speed).
- Network Traffic
- Voice
- Best Effort
- Bulk
These are set by Nehos based on the total size of the transit pipe.
As an example a customer with a 10Mbit/sec by 10Mbit/sec that requires 5 x simultaneous VoIP calls at one would have the service configured as follows.
Transit 10Mbit/sec upload, 10Mbit/sec download
- Network Queue = 1Mbit sec / 1Mbit sec
- Voice Queue = 420Kbit sec / 420Kbit sec
- Best Effort Queue (Web pages, RDP etc) = 4.5Mbit sec / 4.5Mbit sec
- Bulk Queue (All other traffic) = 4Mbit sec / 4Mbit sec
The sum of the above queues can not exceed the total traffic measurement in both directions.
Please feel free to call Nehos on 1300 726 889 to discuss your traffic requirements.