Scenario: Predictable B2B traffic

 

If you need predictable delivery and still need to request a reservation, you also use an integrated service policy. This example uses a controlled load service.

 

Situation

The sales department reports that network traffic is not performing as expected. Your company's i5/OS® operating system resides in a business-to-business (B2B) environment that requires predictable on-demand business service. You need to provide predictable transactions to your customers. You want to give the sales unit a higher quality of service (QoS) for their ordering application during the busiest time of the day (between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.).

In the following figure, the sales team is within your private network. There are routers, enabled by ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP), along the traffic's path to the B2B client. Each R represents a router along the traffic's path.

Figure 1. Integrated services policy to a B2B client using RSVP-enabled routers

 

Objectives

Controlled load service supports the applications that are highly sensitive to congested networks, but are still tolerant to small amounts of loss and delay. If an application uses the controlled load service, its performance will not suffer as network load increases. Traffic is provided with service resembling normal traffic in a network under light conditions. Because this particular application is tolerant to some delay, you decide to use an integrated services policy using a controlled load service.

Integrated service policies also require that the routers are RSVP-enabled along the traffic's path.

 

Prerequisites and assumptions

An integrated service policy is an advanced policy that can require substantial resource. Integrated service policies require the following prerequisites:

  • RSVP-enabled applications

    Because your system does not have any RSVP-enabled applications, write your own RSVP-enabled applications. To write your own applications, use the RSVP API, qtoq QoS socket APIs, or integrated service APIs.

  • RSVP-enabled routers and systems along the network path

    QoS is a network solution. If you are unsure whether the entire network has RSVP capabilities, you can still create an integrated service policy and use a marking to give it some priority; however, priority cannot be guaranteed.

  • Service level agreement

    You have a service level agreement (SLA) with your Internet service provider (ISP) to ensure that the policies receive the requested priority. The QoS policy you create on the system enables traffic (in the policy) to receive priority throughout the network. The QoS policy does not guarantee the priority and is dependent on your SLA. In fact, taking advantage of QoS policies can give you some leverage to negotiate certain service levels and rates.

    If you are within a private network, an SLA is not required.

 

Configuration

After you verify the prerequisites steps, you are ready to create the integrated service policy.

 

Parent topic:

Scenarios: Quality of service policies

Related concepts
Integrated service types Integrated service QoS APIs Service level agreement

Related reference
Monitoring QoS