Veroxity Wavelengths

The QoS Question

Posted by Christian Williams

The buzz about QoS has dwindled since the concept was first introduced but the debate as to whether or not a QoS product is useful seems to be ongoing. Typically deployed on an MPLS network infrastructure, the purpose of QoS is to ensure high priority customer traffic traverses a significantly oversubscribed network.

There is no question that oversubscribed networks need some type of mechanism to ensure no interruption but my doubts about implementing a QoS system are rooted in my view of how a customer might be affected. As a customer, if you are not buying the highest priority level, then your service quality becomes a function of the priorities level purchased by other customers. This leaves you pitted against other customers on the same network where your status can constantly change based on others willingness to purchase an advantage. Increasingly, customers are looking for networks that don’t deploy QoS because they prefer the idea of a level playing field. Their preference is to shape their own traffic before it gets on to the network.

Recently, Veroxity has reached a decision to take a capacity management approach designed to ensure that there is always adequate capacity such that prioritization and classes of service are not required and SLAs are met. Customers that need assistance in shaping their own traffic are offered a managed solution, adjusting their traffic at the edge so that no prioritization is necessary at the core. My belief is that QoS, while positively utilized on some networks, is not something that is a necessity on a VPLS network such as our own.