Qos for IPV6 Implementing Quality

QoS for IPV6

Implementing Quality of Service (QoS) on IPV4 a IPv6

Quality of Service (QoS) considerations in the planning, implementation, management and ongoing operations of a network are among the most critical metrics there are in enterprise network management. On both IPv4 and IPv6 networks, QoS is quantified using the attributes of service availability, Packet Delivery Ratio Analysis, round-trip time for packet delivers and quantification of jitter which is the unexplained variation in performance over time (Bianchi, Blefari-Melazzi, Chan, Holzbock, Fun Hu, Jahn, Sheriff, 2003). Implementing QoS on both IPv4 and IPv6-based networks requires the configuring of source IP address, destination IP address, IP protocol fields, source port numbers, and destination port numbers (Bartolini, Casalicchio, 2006). In addition to these parameters, configuring TCP/IP header parameters including packet length, source and destination MAC addresses and IPV6-specific parameters for redundancy and data latency measurements also need to be planned for in both IPv4 and IPv6 implementations of QoS levels (Bartolini, Casalicchio, 2006).

Implementing QoS on IPv4 and IPv6

QoS is configured on both IPv4 and IPv6 at the second and third layers of the protocol stack. As there are differences in how IPv4 versus IPv6 manage traffic classification workflows and processes based on IP source address, destination address and IP precedence values, different classifiers need to be used in order to Type of Service (ToS) and Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) values for IPv4 versus IPv6 (Bianchi, Blefari-Melazzi, Chan, Holzbock, Fun Hu, Jahn, Sheriff, 2003). There are significant differences in how QoS is implemented on both IPv4 versus IPv6 on these specific attributes as well.

The first and most significant area of differentiation in the configuring of IPv4 versus IPv6 is with regard to classification and marking. Configuring the Source and Destination Addresses, configured for Type of Service (ToS), IP Header field including IP precedence and differentiated services code point (DSC) are used for defining specific parameters of QoS by IPv4 and IPv6 (Bianchi, Blefari-Melazzi, Chan, Holzbock, Fun Hu, Jahn, Sheriff, 2003). Many enterprise network products vendors including Cisco use the ToS header data to define the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters and options (Bartolini, Casalicchio, 2006). Cisco and others are doing this to increase the performance of QoS implementations on IPv4 and IPv6-based networks.