Ethernet QoS (Ethernet quality of service) is one of the key attributes of Carrier Ethernet services, by which the service provider offers business users bandwidth, delivery, and performance guarantees for selected traffic, and allocates the necessary network resources accordingly. Typically, QoS parameters include committed bandwidth profiles; packet delay, delay variation, and packet loss values; and traffic priority schemes. Ethernet QoS guarantees refer to classes of service such as “best effort” data (no guarantees), priority data, and real-time voice and video (the most stringent guarantees). These allow service providers to offer differentiated service level agreements, or SLAs, to meet specific customer requirements.
RAD’s Carrier Ethernet solutions support end-to-end QoS for Ethernet transport and services. Incorporating traffic management capabilities such as committed information rate (CIR), excess information rate (EIR), committed burst size (CBS), and excess burst size (EBS), these Ethernet demarcation devices and aggregation gateways also enable service providers to offer performance guarantees for different classes of service and monitor their services with Ethernet OAM. Traffic prioritization features include VLAN tagging, as well as DSCP and ToS.
