What is QOS and why its a big deal these days ?
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QOS ( Quality of Service ) which allows to manage network traffic in a cost-effective manner to enhance user experience in home and enterprise environments. QOS allows network engineers to measure bandwidth, detect changing network conditions such as congestion.
It has been there for a long time, then why suddenly it has become a media concern ?
Internet 2.0 and Bandwidth Consumption
With the blast of P2P , Online video sites like Youtube, Google videos and other sites the internet is getting on its knees because of bandwidth consumption. Within past few years the traffic has increased so much that ISP's which were happy with Gigabit routers are now talking multi-Gigabit networks. On top of all this VOIP is getting traction from companies.
QOS feature which was introduced many years back is now getting famous again, because there is a limit to which you can hold your bandwidth for all type of traffic. When that threshold is reached, you have to decide what is most important and then decide accordingly.
As many ISP's started playing with QOS, then there came the problem of Network neutrality. When the load increased, telecom companies used QOS to prioritize one type of traffic over the other rather than upgrading their network hardware.
Some hackers are also concerned that telecoms can use this feature to discriminate between different network protocols. Eg. make your VOIP traffic much slower unless you pay extra fees.
All this makes QOS, Net Neutrality and Legal Bubble around it; an interesting topic.
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