i was wondering whats actually a QOS and whether we do need them?

And if we reall
y do need them, how do i set them in my 3Com Wireless Modem Router - 3CRWDR101A75
BE - Best Effort Forwarding 0%
AF1x to AF4x - Assured Forwarding, provides delivery of packets in four indepen
dently forwarded AF classes. Within each AF class, an IP packet can be assigned
one of three different levels of drop precedence. 0%
EF - Expedited Forwarding, is intended to provide low delay, low jitter and low
loss delivery of packets. 0%
How many percent should i set them and the reason?
-------------No. TCP will ensure that the packet is delivered to it destination.
QOS helps decide who gets sent out first and if the buffers in network device
(router or switch) get full which packets get deleted out of the queues first.
BE:
Lowest priority and means the router/switch will forward these if and
when possible. If buffers get full, these are the 1st to be deleted from the bu
ffers. If there is a higher priority packet on the queue, the higher priority p
acket will get sent before a "BE" packet.
AF#x: "Medium" priority, with 4 "sub-priorities". The switch/router will do e
verything possible not to delete these packets from the buffers but it will if t
he buffers get full with higher level packets. If there is a queue, then within
the sub-priorities the higher ones will be sent out first.
EF: The highest priority and "most important". These packets get put to the to
p of the queue as soon as they come in and should never get deleted from the buf
fers.
Now, if you have a TON of EF packets, the buffers will get full and packets wil
l get removed.
I would have to check under XP how to do this, but typically it is based on on
desitnation ports. Which typically tells you what type of traffic it is, 80 - h
ttp, 21/20 = ftp, 23 = telnet, 25 = smtp, etc.
=======================================
Have a shared network in your residence with routers?
If you have a good router, it may offer a service called QoS within its configur
ation page. QoS stands for quality of service. Some routers that support QoS all
ow you to configure traffic to have higher priority than other traffic within yo
ur network. For example, on my 3Com OfficeConnect router I can configure traffic
in ports 6032-6112 (What Demigod uses iirc) to have higher priority (EF for eff
icient forwarding) over HTTP (normal web traffic, which is on AF4X setting), Bit
Torrent on port say 12345 (which is on BE for best effort).
The priority list on my router goes like this: EF>AF4>AF3>AF2>AF1>BE. This may d
epend on the router.
This mean that no matter what other people in my house are doing, even if myself
downloading stuff in the background; traffic from my game always get priority i
n bandwidth and lowest latency it needed. On a shared residence with my other un
iversirt students, it was essential for me to buy a router that support QoS. Thi
s allowed me to play games without problem where other people are youtubing, Bit
Torrenting, etc.
Different routers require different instructions for configuring QoS, so you may

need to consult the manual. Regretably not many routers have QoS. Usually it is
about configuring ports and choosing whether it is TCP/UDP. Demigod uses UDP. Y
ou will also need to add QoS service in Windows by right clicking your LAN/wirel
ess connection in Network Connections control panel (Network and sharing centre
-> Manage network connections in Vista), and make sure QoS Packet Scheduler is
in the list there, if not just click Install and select Service and choose from
there.

QOS is generally used when you have mixed traffic types and one or more of those
types of traffic MUST have its data get through. Generally this is implmented
when you are using VOIP. If a HTTP, FTP, Telnet, or other non-VOIP connection d
rops a packet and it must be resent, the end user may see a small response time
delay. However if a packet is droped in a phone conversation the phone converst
aion is not clear and very difficult to understand the other party.
So, in a network where you have VOIP, you use QOS and set VOIP as the highest/m
ost important traffic so that there are no packets dropped.
But remember, this means that traffic that is considered of less importance cou
ld have packets discarded under high (very high) network stress.
If you don't have VOIP, then you get down to what traffic you have on your netw
ork and if you really want to give one type of traffic priority over another.