QoS Solutions for Business Networks
Quality of Service (QoS) is becoming increasingly important for many organizations. Applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP), video, and business systems compete with other less critical traffic for limited network resources, especially at the Wide Area Network (WAN) access point. Limited resources can create data loss or delays in the flow of information. This is particularly true with VoIP—delayed voice or dropped calls are just a few examples.
Companies need to protect their investment in the WAN, ensuring it is used for key business applications. IP convergence is also creating new challenges. Convergence often brings cost savings but can also add complexity. Finally, many new services and IT applications are entering the market. What should you look for in QoS products? Low cost, fast and easy installation, and a standards-based solution are required.
The Kentrox Q1300 QoS Appliance makes prioritizing traffic and managing bandwidth practical. A graphical web interface provides instrumentation to easily monitor, diagnose, and add policies to ensure proper network performance. The Q1300 combines the features of a QoS appliance and Ethernet switch into one easy-to-use network access device. Graphical reporting also helps ensure that QoS is performing in the network (Figure 1).
Protect critical applications
Mission-critical applications and delay-sensitive traffic, such as video and Voice over IP, significantly degrade when competing for WAN bandwidth due to heavy web traffic. The Q1300 provides priority queuing and shapes traffic before reaching the WAN to ensure high-priority traffic takes precedence over less critical applications. By default, traffic can be classified using industry-standard priority levels making prioritization easy to deploy for most applications. The Q1300 moves delay-sensitive traffic to the front of the queue to reduce delay for time-sensitive traffic. The Q1300 also supports user-created policies for advanced traffic management.
Add QoS support to existing networks
The Q1300 performs prioritization and traffic shaping prior to reaching the WAN, so QoS can be added in almost any network (Figure 2). With typical throughput of 10 Mbps or more, the appliance can be used in conjunction with a range of services, including T1 to multi-link T1, DSL, cable, microwave, and metro-Ethernet. WAN bandwidth settings ensure prioritization is managed in the QoS appliance and not in the access router or modem. In most cases, the Q1300 can be added into a network within 15 minutes without removing or replacing existing equipment, making the addition of QoS easy and fast.
Add QoS support to existing networks
The Q1300 performs prioritization and traffic shaping prior to reaching the WAN, so QoS can be added in almost any network (Figure 2). With typical throughput of 10 Mbps or more, the appliance can be used in conjunction with a range of services, including T1 to multi-link T1, DSL, cable, microwave, and metro-Ethernet. WAN bandwidth settings ensure prioritization is managed in the QoS appliance and not in the access router or modem. In most cases, the Q1300 can be added into a network within 15 minutes without removing or replacing existing equipment, making the addition of QoS easy and fast.
Affordable QoS support
Adding QoS to a network with other products in the market today can be costly. Often, enhancing routers with QoS support involves purchasing additional licenses and increasing memory. In many cases, the router has to be replaced. This results in added cost to the network and a significant amount of network down-time for the upgrade.
The Q1300 is designed to add the QoS support needed for business applications at an affordable price. It delivers business-class prioritization without requiring additional management servers or highly trained staff.
Easy installation
QoS can be difficult to set up in routers and bandwidth management devices. Special training is often required, and that can be problematic for many businesses trying to reduce support costs.
The Kentrox QoS appliance is designed to simplify installation with an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), making it faster and easier for installers to get the system up and running (Figure 3).
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Compatibility
Many companies are planning migration to new services, equipment, and applications. For example, Frame Relay users are migrating to IP Frame Relay, and VoIP users are looking at QoS offerings. It’s important to use solutions that are not proprietary systems. Differentiated Services (DiffServ) is a widely accepted standard for implementing IP QoS. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is another standard that works with DiffServ to simplify and improve IP packet exchange across the WAN. New equipment, applications, and services in today’s market requiring QoS use DiffServ. The Q1300 appliance supports DiffServ and Type of Service (ToS) which is compatible with MPLS services for priority queuing. This enables vendor interoperability and easy migration to new network equipment and services.
Web-style GUI simplifies management
The Q1300’s graphical user interface (Figure 4) contains powerful tools to troubleshoot problems, run QoS reports, make configuration changes, set up traffic-shaping policies, or just check the health of the network. Arranged logically and intuitively by function, the Q1300’s GUI is point-and-click easy. In addition, a command line interface is provided for other management options.
QoS statistics and reports
The Q1300’s graphical reports allow users to verify that QoS is actually performing at the WAN access (Figure 5). Policy reports provide instant feedback on how policies are being applied to network traffic. QoS reports validate traffic by traffic class, so you are ensured that the proper prioritization is occurring to and from the network. Both real-time and historical reports are available to validate changes instantly and to debug problems that have occurred in the past (Figure 5).
QoS is critical
Quality of Service support for managing and protecting business-critical applications is becoming a requirement for many organizations. Lack of QoS support results in unacceptable performance or loss of information (Figure 6).
The Kentrox Q1300 appliance enables easy monitoring and prioritizing of traffic (Figure 7) at an affordable price in today’s world of IP convergence.
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