In Oracle Solaris, quality of service (QoS) is obtained more easily and dynamically by managing network resources. Network resource management is comparable to creating dedicated lanes for traffic. When you combine different resources to provide to the specific types of network packets, those resources form a network lane for those packets. Resources can be assigned differently for each network lane. For example, you can allocate more resources to a lane where network traffic is the heaviest. By configuring network lanes where resources are distributed according to the actual need, you increase the system's efficiency in processing network packets. For more information about network lanes, see Overview of Monitoring Network Traffic Statistics of Datalinks and Flows.
The following network resources are used to increase the system's efficiency in processing packets:
Bandwidth – You can limit the bandwidth of the datalink according to the actual need of the networking processes supported by the datalink.
Priority – You can prioritize the order in which the packets are processed. The latency is reduced for the packets with higher priority because they are processed ahead of the other packets.
NIC rings – If a NIC supports ring allocation, its transmit and receive rings can be dedicated for use by datalinks. For more information, see Managing NIC Rings.
CPU pools – Pools of CPUs are created and associated with specific zones. These pools can be further assigned to datalinks to manage the network processes of their associated zones. For more information, see Managing Pools and CPUs.
CPUs – On a system with multiple CPUs, you can dedicate a given number of CPUs for specific network processing. For more information, see Managing Pools and CPUs.
Network resources on a system can be managed by using either datalink properties or flows.