Quality of service in enterprise networks

Quality of service consists of those mechanisms and protocols designed to facilitate the delivery of delay and bandwidth sensitive material (data/applications) across computer networks. QoS in the Ethernet networks is fundamentally creating unequal access in an essentially equal access network enabling predictable and consistent system performance on a network. The optimum QoS solution is a function of the given network environment and specific corporate needs and indeed, may involve more than one technology. In addition to a critical assessment of these needs, QoS implementation must come to terms with QoS technology, user independence, application level view of QoS deployment, end-to-end solution and the applicability to the existing corporate network. To be most effective, QoS techniques must exercise full control of network service levels in accordance with set priorities. Web based applications are creating fundamental changes in the structure of the corporate enterprise network. Mission-critical applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP,) ecommerce, voice over IP, networked storage and co-located server traffic are burdening enterprise network infrastructures with unpredictable traffic patterns and traffic loads. The article discusses the Enterprise Policy Server, which is responsible for the installation and tracking of QoS policies on the network. This includes policy interpretation from high level definition into low level device configuration, policy conflict resolution, device communication, policy installation, and policy storage