Routers that support QoS can prioritize network traffic. To be able to do this, the data being sent includes either a Type of Service (ToS) or Differentiated Services (DiffServ) indicator that allows routers to identify the type of traffic being sent, and hence allow it to be prioritized.
Typical data that would be prioritized over other traffic includes the following:
- Media streaming
- Voice over IP (VoIP)
- Teleconferencing
- Safety system traffic
Which data to prioritize will vary from organization to organization, and looking at the preceding examples, it should be fairly obvious why safety system traffic would need to be prioritized over normal non-safety traffic, but what about the first three examples? If we did not prioritize this traffic, we would likely find that we had performance and quality issues, with buffering occurring. This would be annoying when...