Quality of Service

Windows 2000 Quality of Service (QoS) is a set of components and technologies that enable a network administrator to allocate and manage end-to-end network resources. QoS enables consistent bandwidth results for network traffic, such as video and audio applications and ERP applications that normally use large amounts of network bandwidth. QoS is a method that allows networks to control their traffic efficiently, potentially reducing the costs spent on new hardware resources. Management becomes easier with Admission Control Service, an administrative interface of QoS, which allows for the centralized management of QoS policies. These policies, which you can configure to meet the requirements of users, programs, or physical locations, determine how you can reserve and allocate priority bandwidth. In the past, QoS has been incorporated into router and switch hardware. Now that it is available as part of Windows 2000, a new level of control across the entire enterprise can be achieved right down to the desktop.

Windows 2000 QoS offers you these benefits:

• Centralized policy and subnet configuration through the QoS Admission Control Services Manager.
• Uses enterprise, subnet and user identities as criteria for reserving network resources and setting priorities.
• Ensures a priority bandwidth reservation that is transparent to the user and requires no user training.
• Enables a network administrator to allocate network resources to prioritized traffic.
• Safeguards for end-to-end delivery service with low delay guarantees.
• Interoperability with LAN, WAN, ATM, Ethernet, and Token Ring configurations.
• Support for multicast transmission of bandwidth reservation messages.
• Windows 2000 QoS Admission Control simplifies your management of priority bandwidth at a low cost of ownership. In this instance, lower cost of ownership equates to not having to replace network media to gain bandwidth.

For more information about DHCP, see Windows 2000 Help and the Windows® 2000 Resource Kit TCP/IP core Networking Guide.

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