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ONT Notes – AutoQoS

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  • AutoQoS benefits
    • Automates QoS for most deployments
    • Protects business-critical apps to maximize availability
    • Simplifies QoS deployments
    • Reduces configuration errors
    • Cheaper, faster, and simpler deployments
    • Follows DiffServ
    • Allows complete control over QoS configs
    • Allows modification of auto-generated configs
  • AutoQoS phases of evolution
    • AutoQoS VOIP – Early version that configures the basics without discovery
    • AutoQoS for Enterprise – Second version that only runs on routers and uses two-step process
      • Autodiscovery using NBAR
      • Generation of class maps
  • AutoQoS key elements
    • Application classification
    • Policy generation
    • Configuration
    • Monitoring and reporting
    • Consistency
  • Interfaces that you can configure AutoQoS on
    • Serial ifs with PPP and HDLC
    • FR point-to-point subifs (NOT multipoint)
    • ATM point-to-point subifs
    • FR-to-ATM links
  • Prerequsites
    • No Qos policy already configured on if
    • CEF enabled on if
    • Correct bandwidth configured on if
    • IP address on low-speed if
  • Configuring AutoQoS Enterprise on a router (NOT a switch)
    • auto qos discovery – begins discovery process
    • auto qos – generates and applies MQC-based policies
  • Configuring AutoQoS VOIP
    • auto qos voip [ trust | cisco-phone ]
  • Verifying AutoQoS on router
    • show auto discovery qos – get autodiscovery results
    • show auto qos – examine configuration generated
      • Number of classes
      • Classification options
      • Marking options
      • Queuing mechanisms
      • Other QoS mechanisms
      • If, subif, PVC where policy is applied
    • show policy-map interface – look at if stats
  • Verify AutoQoS VOIP
    • show auto qos
    • show policy-map interface
    • show mls qos maps – shows CoS to DSCP mappings
  • Possible issues with AutoQoS
    • Too many traffic classes – manually consolidate some
    • Configuration doesn’t change – rerun AutoQoS
    • Configuration may not fit your situation – fine-tune it by hand
  • Fine-tuning AutoQoS
    • Use QPM
    • CLI
    • copy policy into editor, change, reapply
  • AutoQoS can match on characteristics besides ACLs and NBAR
    • match input interface
    • match cos
    • match ip precedence
    • match ip dscp
    • match ip rtp

Aaron Conaway

I like to lean my head to the left, hit it with the palm of my right hand, and document what knowledge falls out.

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Written by Aaron Conaway

February 10th, 2010 at 6:02 pm

ONT Notes – Classification, Marking, and NBAR

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Here’s another set of notes from my ONT studies.  I’m sure someone will find it useful.  Please help to correct dumbass mistakes.

  • Classification is done with traffic desriptors
    • Ingress interface
    • CoS value on ISL or 802.1P frames
    • Source/destination IP address
    • IP Precedence or DSCP value
    • MPLS EXP
    • Application type
  • Layer 3 QoS
    • Type of Service (ToS) is 8-bit field.
    • First 3 bits of ToS are the IP precedence.
    • First 6 bits of ToS are the DSCP value.
    • Last 2 bits of ToS are explicit congestion notification (ECN).
  • Layer 2 QoS
    • Ethernet
      • Class of Service (CoS)
      • On 802.1P frame
      • 3-bit priority (PRI) field
        • 000 – Routine – Best-effort
        • 001 – Priority – Medium priority
        • 010 – Immediate – High priority
        • 011 – Flash – Call signaling
        • 100 – Flash-Override – Video conferencing
        • 101 – Critical – Voice bearer
        • 110 – Internet – Reserved
        • 111 – Network – Reserved
    • Frame Relay
      • 1-bit discard eligible (DE) field
    • ATM
      • 1-bit cell loss priority (CLP) field
    • MPLS (layer 2 1/2)
      • 3-bit experimental (EXP) field
      • By default, the 3 most significant ToS bits (IP Precedence bits) are copied to EXP
  • Per-hop Behavior (PHB)
    • “an externally observable fowarding behavior of a network node toward a group of IP packets that have the same DSCP value”
    • In other words, treat packets with the same DSCP value in the same manner – scheduling, queuing, policing, etc.
    • Behavior aggregate (BA) is a group of packets with the same DSCP value
  • DSCP
    • DSCP is chopped up into 4 PHBs
      • Class selector PHB – (000) old IP precedence compatibility
      • Default PHB – (000) best effort
      • Assured forwarding (AF) PHB – (001, 010, 011, 100) guarantee bandwidth
        • Provides 4 queues for 4 classes of traffic (AF1-4)
        • Also specifies drop preference (ex., AF41, A13) where second number is preference (higher is more probable to be dropped)
        • Each queue must have (W)RED to avoid drops
        • No queue is any better than the other
        • Backward compatible with IP precedence
      • Expedited forwarding (EF) PHB – (101) low delay
        • Minimum delay
        • Bandwidth guarantee
        • Policing
  • Trust boundaries
    • Establish DSCP values as close to the source as possible
      • On the device (IP phone), access switch, or distribution switch
      • The core should never assign DSCP values
    • Only trust DSCP values from devices you trust
    • Examine and rewrite values from untrust sources
  • Network-based Application Recognition (NBAR)
    • Protocol discovery – discovers what protocols you’re running on your network
    • Traffic statistics collection – keeps tracks of stats on each protocol
    • Traffic classification – NBAR protocols can be used in class-maps to define traffic to be services
    • Packet description language models (PDLMs) – table of what protocols NBAR recognizes
    • Limitations
      • Doesn’t work on EtherChannel interfaces
      • Only handles 24 URLs, hosts, or MIME types
      • Only analyzes first 400 bytes of the packets
      • Requires CEF
      • Doesn’t work on HTTPS, multicasts, or fragments
      • Ignored traffic destined for the router itself
    • NBAR commands
      • Router(config)# ip nbar pdlm pdlm-name : Update the PDLM table
      • Router(config)# ip nbar port-map protocol-name [tcp|udp] port-number : Adds an entry to the PDLM table
      • Router# show ip nbar port-map protocol-name : Shows what’s in the PDLM table
      • Router# show ip nbar protocol-discovery : Shows what’s been discovered
      • Router(config-cmap)# match protocol name : a class-map match for an NBAR-discovered protocol
    • Special protocol matching
      • Can match beyond the port number with deep packet inspection
      • Matches HTTP hostname, URL, or MIME type
      • Matches fast-track P2P
      • Matches RTP content

Aaron Conaway

I like to lean my head to the left, hit it with the palm of my right hand, and document what knowledge falls out.

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Written by Aaron Conaway

January 22nd, 2010 at 11:32 am

ONT Notes – Intro to QoS

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I’ll try to keep it a little shorter this time.

Major issues for converged enterprise networks

  • Available bandwidth: competition among applications
    • Fixes
      • Increase bandwidth: More power!
      • Properly queue based on classification and marking: QoS
      • Compress: cRTP, TCP header compression, etc.
  • Delay: Lead time to get a packet to the destination
    • Types of delay
      • Processing delay: routing, switch delay
      • Queuing delay: how long a frame stays in an output queue
      • Serialization delay:  how long to put the frame on the wire
      • Propagation delay: the time to cross the physical medium
  • Jitter (delay variation): Variation is the delay
    • Different delays mean different arrival times
    • De-jitter buffers save up packets to reduce jitter (like the old CD writers)
    • Fixes
      • More bandwidth
      • Prioritize sensitive data and forward first
      • Remark (reclassify) packets based on sensitivity
      • Enable L2 payload compression: make sure compression delay isn’t worse than the jitter
      • Use header compression
  • Packet loss: Packets are lost in the network somewhere
    • Fixes
      • More bandwidth
      • Increase buffers space: more room for the queue on the interface
      • Provide guaranteed bandwidth: Queuing and QoS
      • Congestion avoidance
        • Random Early Detection (RED) and weighted RED (WRED) drop packets before the queue is full
        • Selective dropping is better than FIFO or LIFO dropping

QoS History

  • Priority queuing: gives certain data the right-of-way for transmission
  • Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ): prevents small packets from waiting too long for big packets
  • RTP priority queuing: Gives voice packets the right-of-way
  • CAC: Makes sure we don’t fill up the queue or pipe with voice traffic

Implementing QoS

  • Step 1: Identify traffic types and requirements
    • Network audit
    • Business audit
    • Define bandwidth requirements for each class found
  • Step 2: Classify the traffic
    • Common classes
      • VOIP
      • Mission-critical
      • Signal traffic: for VOIP
      • Transactional application: SAP, ERP
      • Best-effort: Everything else
      • Scavenger: Crap you don’t care about like P2P and your boss’s email
  • Step 3: Define policies for each class
    • Tasks for each class
      • Set max bandwidth
      • Set min bandwidth
      • Assign relative priorities
      • Apply congestion avoidance, congestion management, etc.

QoS Models

  • Best-effort: no QoS
    • Scalable
    • Easy
    • No service guarantee: doesn’t care what you’re trying to do
    • No service differentiation: all traffic is equal
  • Integrated Service (IntServ)
    • Hard-QoS
    • Uses RSVP to guarantee bandwidth through the entire path
    • Requires
      • Admission control
      • Classification
      • Polices the traffic (ceiling)
      • Queuing
      • Scheduling
    • Advantages
      • End-to-end resource admission control
      • Per-request policy admission control
      • Signaling of dynamic ports
    • Disadvantages
      • Continuous signaling
      • Not scalable
  • Differentiated Services (DiffServ)
    • Soft-QoS
    • Configured on each hop
    • Traffic is classified
    • Enforces different treatment on different classes
    • Defined based on business requirements
    • Benefits
      • Scalable
      • Supports lots of service levels
    • Drawbacks
      • No absolute guarantee of service
      • Complex configuration throughout network

QoS Implementation Methods

  • CLI
    • Old school
    • Not used any more
  • Modules QoS CLI (MQC)
    • Step 1: class-map
    • Step 2: policy-map
    • Step 3: service-policy
  • AutoQoS
    • Automatically generates classes and policies based on traffic it sees
    • Super-simple
    • Requires CEF, NBAR, and correct bandwidth statements
  • SDM QoS Wizard
    • Next, next, next
    • Can be used to implement, monitor, or troubleshoot QoS

Aaron Conaway

I like to lean my head to the left, hit it with the palm of my right hand, and document what knowledge falls out.

More Posts - Website

Written by Aaron Conaway

January 20th, 2010 at 10:21 pm