C H A P T E R 9

Management Tools and

QoS Design

Networking course books, including Cisco’s, tend to relegate management tools to the end of the book. Likewise, for implementation-oriented classes, specific coverage of design issues tends to happen only during chalk talks with the instructor, unless the course specifically covers design issues. With the Deploying QoS class, however, both topics get specific coverage in two separate chapters at the end of the course.

QoS management tools and QoS design both relate to the information that has already been presented in this book. The QoS management tools enable us to better monitor, configure, update configurations, troubleshoot, and notice trends in a network. Similarly, the design practices help us make better choices on how to implement the QoS tools. But, at the end of it all, both topics involve how best to make use of the large toolbox of QoS tools that were described in the earlier chapters of this book.

The exams describe their coverage of management and design with a short list of very specific exam objectives. The DQOS exam covers the features and functions of the QoS management tools, but does not cover how to point and click to use them. Although the management tools themselves have not been covered elsewhere in this book, the QoS tools they configure and manage have been covered extensively. So, this chapter just points out the features and functions of each tool.

The design treatment in this chapter focuses on voice and video, with many of those concepts already covered in this book in Chapter 1, “QoS Overview.” The coverage relates mostly to when to use what QoS tool, along with a four-step process for how to go about the process of QoS design.

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz

The 12-question quiz, derived from the major sections in the “Foundation Topics” section of this chapter, helps you determine how to spend your limited study time.

658 Chapter 9: Management Tools and QoS Design

Table 9-1 outlines the major topics discussed in this chapter and the “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions that correspond to those topics.

Table 9-1 “Do I Know This Already?” Foundation Topics Section-to-Question Mapping

CAUTION The goal of self-assessment is to gauge your mastery of the topics in this chapter. If you do not know the answer to a question or are only partially sure of the answer, mark this question wrong for purposes of the self-assessment. Giving yourself credit for an answer you correctly guess skews your self-assessment results and might provide you with a false sense of security.

You can find the answers to the “Do I Know This Already?” quiz in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes and Q&A Sections.” The suggested choices for your next step are as follows:

•10 or less overall score—Read the entire chapter. This includes the “Foundation Topics,” the “Foundation Summary,” and the “Q&A” sections.

•11 or 12 overall score—If you want more review on these topics, skip to the “Foundation Summary” section and then go to the “Q&A” section. Otherwise, move to the next chapter.

QoS Management Tools Questions

1What do the following acronyms stand for? IPM, QPM, SAA, QDM

2What QoS management tool(s) enables you to define QoS policies, after which it creates the appropriate configurations, and deploys the configurations to identified network devices?

3Which QoS management tool(s) includes as a primary feature the capability to graph realtime information about bit/byte/packet rates and packet loss?

4What QoS management tool(s) generates packets, called probes, and measures various performance attributes, such as delay and jitter?

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz 659

5What QoS management tool(s) includes as a primary function the capability to troubleshoot and isolate network-wide performance issues by viewing the individual components in a complete end-to-end path through the network?

6What QoS management tool(s) is embedded into a router?

QoS Design Questions

7List Step 1 in the QoS design process, and give a short summary of what the step includes.

8List Step 3 in the QoS design process, and give a short summary of what the step includes.

9What are the ITU G.114 and Cisco recommendations for maximum one-way delay for voice calls?

10Summarize the Cisco recommendations for marked values for voice and video traffic.

11Describe the Cisco recommendation for queuing voice and video traffic.

12List Step 4 in the QoS design process, and give a short summary of what the step includes.