WLAN QoS Policies

Quality of service (QoS) provides a data traffic prioritization scheme. QoS reduces congestion from excessive traffic. If there is enough bandwidth for all users and applications (unlikely because excessive bandwidth comes at a very high cost), then applying QoS has very little value. QoS provides policy enforcement for mission-critical applications and/or users that have critical bandwidth requirements when bandwidth is shared by different users and applications.

QoS helps ensure each WLAN receives a fair share of the overall bandwidth, either equally or as per the proportion configured. Packets directed towards clients are classified into categories, for example Video, Voice, and Data. Packets within each category are processed based on the weights defined for each WLAN.

Note

WLAN QoS configurations differ significantly from QoS policies configured for radios. WLAN QoS configurations are designed to support the data requirements of wireless clients, including the data types they support and their network permissions. Radio QoS policies are specific to the transmit and receive characteristics of the connected radios themselves, independent from the wireless clients the access point radios supported.