Enterprise QoS Solution Reference Network Design Guide

Chapter 2 Campus QoS Design
Version 3.3
Catalyst 3550—QoS Considerations and Design
Note The default queue limits are such that each queue is assigned 25% of the available buffer space. It should
be noted that when the queue limits are modified, the queue is temporarily shutdown during the hardware
reconfiguration and the switch may drop newly-arrived packets destined to the queue. Thus, it may be
advisable not to tune the queue limits on Catalyst 3550 switches already in production networks.
Additionally, WRED is enabled on each (non-priority) queue. This allows for the preferential treatment
of Bulk Data (DSCP AF11) over Scavenger (CS1) within Q1, as well as the preferential treatment of
Internetworking/Networking protocols (DSCP CS6 and CS7, respectively) over all other applications
assigned to Q3. Even though Q2 has only Best Effort traffic assigned to it, enabling WRED on this queue
increases the efficiency of TCP applications within this queue during periods of congestion.
A low WRED threshold, such as 40%, can be set for Q1 to aggressively drop Scavenger traffic in order
to preferentially service Bulk Data. The WRED thresholds for Q2 and Q3 can be set to higher levels,
such as 80%.
By default all DSCP values are mapped to the first WRED threshold of the queue to which their CoS
values are assigned. Therefore, only DSCP values that are to be mapped to the second WRED thresholds
(of their respective queues) need to be manually configured. In this case, Bulk Data (DSCP AF11/10),
Internetwork Control (DSCP CS6/48), and Network Control (DSCP CS7/56) all need to be explicitly
mapped to the second WRED threshold via the wrr-queue dscp-map interface configuration command.
Note Network control traffic in the campus primarily refers to Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) traffic, such as
Bridge Protocol Data Units (BPDUs). While these Layer 2 Ethernet frames are marked CoS 7, they
(obviously) do not have any capability to carry Layer 3 DSCP markings. Thus, it may seem moot to map
DSCP CS7 (56) to a higher WRED threshold. However, it should be kept in mind that Catalyst switches
generate Internal DSCP values for all frames (regardless of whether they are carrying IP or not). These
Internal DSCP values are used for QoS decisions, such as WRED in this case. Therefore, since STP
BPDU frames (marked CoS 7) generate an Internal DSCP value of 56, mapping DSCP 56 to the second
threshold of Q3 provides preferential treatment for these important Layer 2 frames.
The configuration for these tuning options, which are available only on GigabitEthernet interfaces on the
Catalyst 3550, is shown below.
Example 2-23 Catalyst 3550 GigabitEthernet Interface Queuing and Dropping Configuration—1P3Q2T
CAT3550(config)#interface range GigabitEthernet 0/1 – 2
CAT3550(config-if-range)# wrr-queue bandwidth 5 25 70 1
! Q1 gets 5% BW, Q2 gets 25% BW, Q3 gets 70% BW, Q4 is the PQ
CAT3550(config-if-range)# wrr-queue queue-limit 5 25 40 30
! Tunes buffers to 5% for Q1, 25% for Q2, 40% for Q3 and 30% for Q4
CAT3550(config-if-range)# wrr-queue random-detect max-threshold 1 40 100
! Sets Q1 WRED threshold 1 to 40% and threshold 2 to 100%
CAT3550(config-if-range)# wrr-queue random-detect max-threshold 2 80 100
! Sets Q2 WRED threshold 1 to 80% and threshold 2 to 100%
CAT3550(config-if-range)# wrr-queue random-detect max-threshold 3 80 100
! Sets Q3 WRED threshold 1 to 80% and threshold 2 to 100%
CAT3550(config-if)# wrr-queue cos-map 1 1 ! Assigns Scavenger to Q1
CAT3550(config-if)# wrr-queue cos-map 2 0 ! Assigns Best Effort to Q2
CAT3550(config-if)# wrr-queue cos-map 3 2 3 4 6 7 ! Assigns CoS 2,3,4,6,7 to Q3
CAT3550(config-if)# wrr-queue cos-map 4 5 ! Assigns VoIP to Q4 (PQ)
CAT3550(config-if-range)# wrr-queue dscp-map 2 10 48 56
! Maps Bulk Data (10), Routing (48) and Spanning Tree (Internal DSCP 56)
! to WRED threshold 2 of their respective queues – all other DSCP values
! are mapped (by default) to WRED threshold 1 of their respective queues
CAT3550(config-if)# priority-queue out ! Enables Q4 as PQ
Enterprise QoS Solution Reference Network Design Guide
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