3Com 4007, Implementation Manual, Page: 607 / 684

RSVP 607
RSVP
The Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) is an IP service that prevents
real-time traffic such as voice or video from overwhelming bandwidth
resources. In general, RSVP supports QoS IP flow specifications by placing
and managing resource reservations across the network (setting
admission control, policing, and restricting the creation of RSVP
reservations). Your Multilayer Switching Module can reserve and police
the bandwidth requested for each RSVP session.
RSVP is receiver-oriented, that is, an end system can send an RSVP request
on behalf of an application to request a specific QoS from the network.
At each hop along the path back to the source, routers such as your
Layer 3 switching module register the reservation and try to provide the
required QoS. If a router cannot provide the required QoS, its RSVP
process sends an error to the end system that initiated the request.
RSVP is designed for multicast applications, but it also supports resource
reservations for unicast applications as well as point-to-point
transmissions. RSVP does not implement a routing algorithm.
To use RSVP, you must be routing. (RSVP operates at Layer 3 for IP-based
data flows.) End stations in the configuration must support RSVP in order
to request the reservation of bandwidth through the network.
By default, RSVP is disabled on the Multilayer Switching Module. If you
decide to use RSVP, 3Com recommends that you use the default RSVP
settings.