5-6
Quality of Service: Managing Bandwidth More Effectively     
QoS Operation
QoS Operation
On the switches covered in this guide, QoS operation may be configured 
through a combination of the following methods:
■ Globally-configured, switch-wide QoS settings
■ Classifier-based per-port and per-VLAN QoS policies. 
Classifier-based QoS policies are designed to work with existing globally-
configured, switch-wide QoS settings by allowing you to zoom in on a subset 
of port or VLAN traffic to further manage it. You can use multiple match 
criteria to more finely select and define the classes of traffic that you want to 
manage. QoS policy actions determine how you can handle the selected traffic. 
re-marking  Assigns a new QoS policy to an outbound packet by changing the:
• Class-of-Service (CoS) 802.1p bit setting in Layer 2 VLAN headers 
• DSCP bit setting in the Layer 3 IPv4 ToS byte (or IPv6 Traffic Class byte).
tagged port 
membership
Identifies a port as belonging to a specific VLAN and enables VLAN-tagged packets to carry an 802.1p 
priority when sent from the port in outbound traffic. When a port is an untagged member of a VLAN, 
outbound packets belonging to the VLAN do not carry an 802.1p priority setting.
Type-of-Service 
(ToS) 
One of the bytes in an IPv4 packet header. IPv4 packets may be classified according to two type-of-
service modes:
• IP-precedence mode, using the upper three bits of the ToS byte
• Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv) mode, using the upper six bits of the ToS byte. 
For more information about the IPv4 ToS field, see Table 5-11 and the “IP-precedence bits” and “DSCP” 
definitions in this table.
Traffic Class 
byte 
In IPv6 packets, the byte that corresponds to the IPv4 Type-of-Service field, consisting of a six-bit (high-
order) Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv) field and a two-bit (low-order) reserved field. The three-bit 
(high-order) precedence field in the Traffic Class byte corresponds to the IP precedence bit set in IPv4 
packets. See also “IP-precedence bits” and “DSCP” elsewhere in this table.
Note: As in IPv4, IPv6 packets may be classified according to two type-of-service modes:
• IP-precedence mode, using the upper three bits of the Traffic Class byte
• Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv) mode, using the upper six bits of the Traffic Class byte
For more information about the IPv6 Traffic Class field, see Table 5-11 on page 5-91 and the “IP-
precedence bits” and “DSCP” definitions in this table.
upstream 
device
A device linked directly or indirectly to an inbound switch port. The switch receives traffic from
 
upstream devices.
Term  Use in This Document