You can use differentiated service markings in an integrated service policy to maintain the priority of the packets sent in a mixed environment.
A mixed environment occurs when an integrated service reservation travels through different routers that do not support integrated service reservations but do support differentiated service. Because your traffic passes through different domains, service level agreements, and equipment capabilities, you might not always get the service you want.
To help alleviate this potential problem, you can attach a differentiated service marking to your integrated service policy. If a policy crosses a router that cannot use the ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP), your policy still maintains some priorities. The marking you add is called a per-hop behavior.
In addition to using markings, you can also use the no-signal function. When you select this function, the no-signal versions of the APIs allow you to write an application that causes an RSVP rule to be loaded on the operating system. The application only requires the server-side application of the TCP/IP conversation to be RSVP-enabled. The RSVP signaling is done automatically on behalf of the client side. This creates the RSVP connection for the application even if the client side is not able to use RSVP.
The no-signal function is specified within the integrated service policy. To designate no signal, perform the following steps:
Related concepts
Class of service Integrated service