Quality of Service (QoS) is a general term for classifying and prioritizing traffic
throughout a network. QoS enables you to establish a traffic priority policy to
improve control and throughput of important data.

There will always be points in the network where multiple traffic streams
merge or where network links will change speed and capacity, so it is impor-
tant to move traffic on the basis of relative importance. Without QoS prioriti-
zation, less important traffic can consume network bandwidth and slow down
or halt the delivery of more important traffic. For example, without QoS, most
traffic received by a switch is forwarded with the same priority it had when
entering the switch. In many cases, such traffic is “normal” priority and
competes for bandwidth with all other normal-priority traffic, regardless of
its relative importance to your organization’s mission. QoS keeps the most
important network traffic moving at an acceptable speed regardless of current
bandwidth usage. This means you can manage available bandwidth so that the
most important traffic goes first.

As of Summer 1999,

HP TopTools for Hubs & Switches can configure a QoS

policy in your network for the following HP Procurve Switches running the
C.07.XX (or later) software release:

■

HP Procurve Switch 1600M

■

HP Procurve Switch 2400M

■

HP Procurve Switch 2424M

■

HP Procurve Switch 4000M