23. Classes Of Service
ROX™ v2.2 User Guide
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RuggedBackbone™ RX5000
23. Classes Of Service
ROX™ CoS provides the following features:
• Support for 4 Classes of Service
• Ability to prioritize traffic by ingress port.
• Ability to prioritize traffic by the priority field in 802.1Q tags.
• Ability to prioritize traffic based on its source or destination MAC address.
• Ability to prioritize traffic by the TOS field in the IP header.
23.1. CoS Operation
CoS provides the ability to expedite the transmission of certain frames and port traffic over others.
The CoS of a frame can take on one of four values: Normal, Medium, High or Critical.
The default policies of the switch enforce a Normal CoS for all traffic.
Use the highest supported CoS with caution, as it is always used by the switch for handling
network management traffic such as RSTP BPDUs.
If this CoS is used for regular network traffic, upon traffic bursts, it may result in loss of
some network management frames which in its turn may result in loss of connectivity over
the network.
The CoS feature has two main phases - inspection and forwarding:
23.1.1. Inspection Phase
In the inspection phase, the CoS priority of a received frame is determined from:
• A specific CoS based upon the source and destination MAC address (as set in the Static MAC
Address Table).
• The priority field in 802.1Q tags.
• The Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) component of the Type Of Service (TOS) field, if the
frame is IP.
• The default CoS for the port.
Note that a frame’s CoS will be determined once the first examined parameter is found in the frame.
Received frames are first examined to determine if their destination or source MAC address is found in
the Static MAC Address Table. If yes, the CoS configured for the static MAC address is used. If neither
destination or source MAC address is in the Static MAC Address Table, the frame is then examined for
802.1Q tags and the priority field is mapped to a CoS. If a tag is not present, the frame is examined to
determine if it is an IP frame. If the frame is IP and inspecting TOS is enabled, the CoS is determined
from the DSCP field. If the frame is not IP or inspecting TOS is disabled, the default CoS for the port
is used.