What Are Differentiated Services?

By enabling IPQoS, you can provide different levels of network service for selected customers and selected applications. The different levels of service are collectively referred to as differentiated services. The differentiated services that you provide to customers can be based on a structure of service levels that your company offers to its customers. You can also provide differentiated services based on the priorities that are set for applications or users on your network.

Providing quality of service involves the following activities:

• Delegating levels of service to different groups, such as customers or departments in an enterprise

• Prioritizing network services that are given to particular groups or applications

• Discovering and eliminating areas of network bottlenecks and other forms of congestion

• Monitoring network performance and providing performance statistics

• Regulating bandwidth to and from network resources