QoS, which stands for Quality of Service, is a network traffic router established to provide equal, uninterrupted, and lag-free service to all users within the available bandwidth. Data streams divided into different groups can be used for prioritization. This situation is called queuing. After calculating how much data a router can receive, it shapes the traffic by queuing packets. High-priority packets are in progress while lower-priority packets are delayed. Queues store data of network devices when it cannot be sent by that data. If a standard TCP data transfer stream has a lower priority, the priority packets are queued until there is enough bandwidth to be transmitted.
Priority for VoIP Calls
The rapid proliferation of remote work brings with it heavy internet traffic in the business world. While this intensity causes applications that provide bank, accounting, and customer services to slow down and deteriorate, businesses aim to minimize network congestion so that inconsistent VoIP packages do not damage the trust of brands.
Some applications that use the UDP protocol in your network are sensitive to latency. UDP does not retransmit lost packets, but TCP retransmits. For this reason, TCP packets should be preferred for file transfer from computer to computer. This is because, whenever a packet is lost, it is regenerated or edited by your computer, unlike the UDP protocol. Even if the data transferred with standard TCP fills the queue completely, network congestion is prevented and this time low priority packets are assigned a queue. However, for UDP applications (phone calls over IP), any lost packets cannot be retransmitted. The reason for this is the sound packets come as a sequential stream.
If your network has a lot of bandwidth and low traffic, the probability of lag or freezing becomes difficult. But in corporate networks, if your routers and switches start to become overly congested, your streaming applications are damaged. At that moment, QoS comes into play, which prevents network clogging.
Integrated Services and Differentiated Services (IntServ and DiffServ)
Each IP package consists of two different parts, header, and payload, while the header contains information such as IP address, while the payload contains all of the data transported to the target. Even with the most successful routing, QoS is only one part of a large system that connects you to the telephone system. This system cluster consists of two different services. While IntServ provides guarantees to individual streams using the per-stream approach, DiffServ provides collective assurance for applications. Both models are designed to work on wired networks.
VoIP is susceptible to network congestion that causes echoes, delays, and dropped calls. Internet speed expectations of employees have an important place in terms of business efficiency. Briefly, to give an example over voice calls, the loss of even a single packet during a call means that the sound quality becomes intermittent or incomprehensible.