CONTROLLING YOUR SD WAN TRAFFIC USING QoS

A guide to categorising your network traffic into standardised enterprise blocks within the SD WAN portal.

With SD WAN, your organization can take advantage of seven standard traffic classes and customize how your enterprise and applications map into these traffic classes. In this use case we review the standard traffic classes (called QoS profiles) and recommend the default mapping into those classes. We also review how you can edit a QoS policy (and rule) to define application level matching within these standard classes.

Colt sets up and deploys the following seven QoS profiles for your organisation’s class of service.

PROFILE NAME	RECOMMENDED USE	FORWARDING CLASS	TRAFFIC CLASS
Expedited Forwarding-1	Voice	FC4	Premium+
Expedited Forwarding-2	Video Conferencing	FC5	Premium

PROFILE NAME	RECOMMENDED USE	FORWARDING CLASS	TRAFFIC CLASS
AssuredForwarding-1	Priority Apps	FC8	Enhanced+
AssuredForwarding-2	Business Apps	FC9	Enhanced

PROFILE NAME	RECOMMENDED USE	FORWARDING CLASS	TRAFFIC CLASS
BestEffort-1	Low Priority Apps	FC12	Basic+
BestEffort-2	Internet	FC13	Basic
BestEffort-3	Local Guest Internet	FC14	Basic

TO REVIEW QOS PROFILES:

1. Log in to the SD WAN portal.

2. In the Director Context, click the Config Templates tab.

3. Select the template you want to review QoS for. QoS profiles may be defined on its own template, which is called a service template. CenturyLink creates your template and names it: [your organisation’s name]-QoS.

4. In the Networking tab, select Class of Service > QoS > Profiles.

5. To view how a profile is mapped to a forwarding class, click on the profile name.

   

Note: Colt recommends your organisation does not create addiitonal profiles or edit the forwarding classes or settings for the default profiles without a custom design review. To schedule a custom design review, contact your account representative.

Colt uses the application identification functionality to identify most of your organization’s traffic and assigns it to the appropriate traffic class. In addition, Colt uses differentiated services code point (DSCP) values and zones to define traffic into the appropriate traffic class.

The table below shows samples of how your traffic is matched to the forwarding classes.

ExpiditedForwarding-1	Voice	DSCP: EF (46) and/or SIP/RTP and/or Voice Zone
ExpiditedForwarding-2	Video Conferencing	DSCP: AF41 (34)
AssuredForwarding-1	Priority Apps	Application Filter: Thin Clients
AssuredForwarding-2	Business Apps	Office 365 Apps: Destination IP: 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16
BestEffort-1	Low Priority Apps	Application Filter: App/OS Updaters: Destination IP address: xxxxxx/xxx
BestEffort-2	Internet	All Else
BestEffort-3	Local Guest Internet	Source Zone: Guest

Note: Colt names the rule either Voice or GuestInternet. Look for the appropriate name to monitor and view analytics for the rule.

You can take the following steps to edit a rule using the SD WAN app QoS feature. Rules are executed in priority order with the highest (or first) rule at the top and the lowest (or last) rule at the bottom. You can move rules by selecting them and moving them up or down the list.

An app QoS policy (called the default-policy) was created by Colt during the onboarding process. You can have only one QoS policy, but you can edit the rules for that policy by following the instructions below.

To configure app QoS policies and rules:

1. Log in to the SD WAN portal.

2. In the Director Context, click the Config Templates tab, select a template.

3. In the Networking tab, select Class of Service > App QoS > Policies > Rules.

4. From the Organization list, select an entity.

5. Select the checkbox next to an existing rule to edit.

   

1. In our example, we will edit Voice-SIP-RTP.

   

1. Click the Applications/URL tab to review/edit the applications that are matched to this rule.

   

1. To add a new application, click the + sign and select the application from the list. You can also define a new custom application by selecting the New Application selection.

2. Click OK.

APPLY THESE CHANGES TO YOUR BRANCHES

1. Click Commit.

   

2. From the Select Template list, select the related branches to commit either the new SD WAN rule or all rules. We recommend you commit a template to just one branch to test your new rule before applying it to all the branches related to your template.

   

1. In the View column, click the eye icon to preview changes.

   

1. Click OK.